WonderFi to Acquire Coinberry for an Expected $30.6M Pending Approval

For multiple years now, we have seen Kevin O’Leary – a popular investor commonly known for his time spent on ‘Dragon’s Den’ and ‘Shark’s Tank’ – dive deeper into next-gen forms of finance, beginning with his strategic investment in equity crowdfunding platform, StartEngine.  Fast forward to the present, and another of his strategic investments, WonderFi, has just announced its second major acquisition over the past few weeks.  Coming in to the tune of $30.6M, WonderFi is set to acquire popular Canadian exchange, Coinberry.

Details of the Deal

While recent acquisitions made by WonderFi have involved a mix of cash and shares, its deal involving Coinberry is believed to be purely the latter.  The deal, which is expected to be finalized sometime in Q2 of this year, is valued at $30.6M (38.3M CAD), and will see the issuance of a fresh 29.1M common shares.

Before this acquisition can be finalized, approval needs to be granted by both existing shareholders, and Canadian regulators.

Commentary

Upon announcing this acquisition, representatives of WonderFi took the time to comment.

WonderFi CEO, Ben Samaroo, states, ‘This acquisition further establishes WonderFi as a leader amongst crypto companies in Canada, and along with our acquisition of Bitbuy, establishes a great framework for our expansion into global markets in 2022. As we continue our consolidation of leading licensed crypto platforms, our user count, revenue and pool of talent continues to grow.’

WonderFi Investor/Advisor/Ambassador, Kevin O’Leary, states, ‘WonderFi’s management team continues to execute on accretive acquisitions and this is an extremely important one, because it shows the speed and vision behind WonderFi’s plan. Compliant access to crypto is what matters and WonderFi has quickly established itself as a leader in Canada. Next stop, global.’

Is there an Echo?

As previously indicated, this deal involving Coinberry is not the first of its kind involving WonderFi in recent weeks.  Less than a month ago, Coinberrys Canadian rival, BitBuy, was acquired by WonderFi for a staggering $162M.  Between these two acquisitions, WonderFi will see its extended client-base grow by over 600,000 in Canada alone.

As is the case with its newly announced acquisition of Coinberry, this past move was taken with the, ‘…mission of democratizing finance through easy and secure access to DeFi and crypto’.

Aside from each’s notable presence within Canadian DeFi and crypto, BitBuy and Coinberry remain in a very select group of registered platforms within the nation.  The following counterparts join them,

• CoinSmart
• Fidelity
• Netcoins
• WealthSimple

A Look Forward

So what do these two major acquisitions mean looking forward?  O’leary has indicated that in time, there will be some level of integration between BitBuy and Coinberry, with each platforms unique features on offer to clients of the other.  No timetable however has been given for this, as full attention is doubt being placed on closing the deal first.