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Robinhood buys WonderFi after Canadian crypto rules limited growth
Robinhood closed the acquisition on June 1, paying C$0.36 per WonderFi share, about US$180 million in equity value, and plans to migrate Bitbuy and Coinsquare in phases.
WonderFi founder Karia Samaroo said Canada’s capital markets and crypto regulatory setup effectively capped the company’s growth, a factor he pointed to in explaining Robinhood’s purchase of the platform. In his view, what looked like domestic momentum had turned into a ceiling rather than a launchpad for global scale.
Yahoo Finance reported that Robinhood completed the acquisition on June 1, paying C$0.36 per WonderFi share, implying roughly US$180 million in equity value. The deal also provides Robinhood with an established Canadian crypto operation and an investment dealer license, which Samaroo described as a more direct route into the market than building a compliant crypto platform from scratch.
WonderFi’s business included about 300,000 funded customers, roughly US$800 million in crypto assets under custody, and US$2.6 billion in trailing 12-month trading volume as of April, according to the report. WonderFi’s platforms, including Bitbuy and Coinsquare, are being migrated to Robinhood’s Canadian crypto platform in phases.
Samaroo, who founded WonderFi in 2021, argued that scaling beyond Canada became difficult due to thinner growth capital, weaker business investment, fragmented securities regulation, and higher friction from a demanding digital asset regime plus provincial oversight. He said Canada’s post-Quadriga rules added cost and complexity and noted that several major global exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Gemini, entered Canada before later exiting.