Robinhood Formally Enters Canada After Closing WonderFi Acquisition

The WonderFi acquisition provides Robinhood regulated crypto operations in Canada and expands its workforce and buyer community.

Robinhood Markets has accomplished its $180 million acquisition of WonderFi, a Toronto-based supplier of digital asset services. With the deal, Robinhood is coming into the Canadian market by buying a longtime operator of regulated crypto exchanges.

As a part of the acquisition, WonderFi’s two regulated crypto buying and selling platforms, Bitbuy and Coinsquare, will turn into a part of the Robinhood model. Canadian prospects will likely be invited to make use of the Robinhood app, which presents a flat 0.5% charge per CAD commerce, together with the corporate’s person interface, person expertise, and world infrastructure.

Main Canadian Crypto Push

In its official press launch, Robinhood said it would proceed to assist WonderFi’s current institutional relationships in Canada whereas constructing on the institutional enterprise it has developed by Bitstamp. The growth is a part of Robinhood’s broader technique to construct an built-in world monetary ecosystem.

Following the acquisition, Robinhood now has greater than 1 million worldwide funded prospects, together with roughly 300,000 funded prospects that got here by WonderFi. WonderFi staff will be part of Robinhood’s current Canadian workforce of greater than 240 staff. Robinhood established its Canadian headquarters in Toronto in 2024 as an engineering hub, citing Canada’s robust know-how expertise pool.

In an announcement, Johann Kerbrat, SVP and Basic Supervisor of Robinhood Crypto & Worldwide, stated

“WonderFi has in depth expertise working regulated crypto platforms that serve newbie and superior crypto customers alike, making it a perfect associate to speed up Robinhood’s mission in Canada. We’re happy to have closed our acquisition and sit up for delivering modern, user-centric investing merchandise to Canadian prospects.”

The deal comes months after Robinhood reported a pointy decline in crypto buying and selling exercise throughout the first quarter. Crypto transaction income fell 47% year-over-year to $134 million, whereas crypto buying and selling quantity dropped 48% to $24 billion. The corporate additionally missed analyst expectations for earnings and income, regardless that web revenue elevated by 3% to $346 million.

Layer 2 Plans

In February, Robinhood launched the general public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 community constructed utilizing Arbitrum know-how. The testnet provides builders early entry to the community forward of a deliberate mainnet launch later this 12 months and permits them to construct and take a look at purposes utilizing customary Ethereum instruments.

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In keeping with the corporate, a number of infrastructure suppliers, together with Alchemy, Chainlink, LayerZero, and TRM, had already begun integrating with the community.