Early into the year Techcouver reported that WonderFi was set to acquire Bitbuy, the first approved crypto marketplace in Canada.
As of today we can confirm that the deal is officially closed: Vancouver’s WonderFi, backed by famed investor Kevin O’Leary, has acquired BitBuy for $206 million in cash and shares.
The deal went through “major hurdles” to complete, including navigating roadblocks from provincial regulators, who in turn were contending with the complex and constantly changing crypto world. For example, decentralized finance is new to regulators and has never been formally reviewed in Canada.
WonderFi is on a mission of create better access to DeFi through their consumer finance app and a digital asset portfolio which consists of crypto and DeFi assets. The acquisition will establish WonderFi as a major end-to-end consumer platform for people seeking access to crypto and DeFi.
“The integration of WonderFi and Bitbuy is a huge step forward in our mission of democratizing finance through easy and secure access to DeFi and crypto,” said Ben Samaroo, CEO of WonderFi, in January. “The integration of Bitbuy’s product suite will accelerate and expand the reach and scope that WonderFi can offer to the market, and will drive long-term growth and value for the company.”
“This is a combination of two management teams with excellent executional skills that now have the bandwidth, assets and licenses to provide an institutional grade compliant crypto platform to investors interested in exposure to centralized and decentralized financial services,” O’Leary agreed.
Bitbuy was founded in 2016 and now boasts nearly 400,000 users accounting for more than $4.4 billion in transactions. The company ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 program, with over 3,000% in revenue growth from 2017 to 2020, which made it the highest-ranking crypto asset trading platform on the list.
Moving forward, WonderFi intends to leverage its robust financial war chest—which of course includes O’Leary’s broad arsenal—to establish dominance in the Canada’s crypto landscape.
Specifically, the company says that it wants to consolidate the Canadian digital asset industry through further acquisitions. And there are also intentions to expand “aggressively,” beginning with the US and Australia in particular.
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