Crypto Giants Look to Buy Assets From Failed Crypto Exchange

The crypto bear market isn't all bad after all. It turns out the downturn provides excellent opportunities for expansion through mergers and acquisitions (M&A). According to Needham's senior research analyst John Todaro, valuations of public crypto companies have fallen about 70% this year. The sector's also in the midst of a crypto crash, which has wiped out around $2 trillion in value over the past few months, meaning crypto companies are cheaper now a year ago when the sector was in full recovery. Voyager Digital, the lender whose bankruptcy deepened this year's crypto market crisis, is attracting interest from some of the biggest players in the space, including exchanges Binance and FTX. FTX and Ripple Labs still have M&A in the pipeline for 2022 but WonderFi Technologies Inc (TSX:WNDR) (OTCQB:WONDF) was one step ahead when earlier this year they acquired Bitbuy and Coinberry, two of Canada's six registered crypto trading platforms. Hut 8 Mining (NASDAQ:HUT) (TSX:HUT), CleanSpark (NASDAQ:CLSK), Galaxy Digital (TSX:GLXY), and Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:RIOT) are also making acquisitions or looking for interesting deals in the crypto space.

WonderFi Technologies Inc (TSX:WNDR) (OTCQB:WONDF) is a technology company providing greater access to digital assets through centralized and decentralized platforms.

On July 4, WonderFi Technologies completed its previously announced acquisition of Coinberry, one of Canada's leading crypto asset trading platforms registered with the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and the first pure-play licensed crypto broker in Canada.

"This acquisition further solidifies WonderFi as a leader amongst crypto companies in Canada, and along with our acquisition of Bitbuy, establishes a great foundation for our expansion into global markets," said WonderFi CEO Ben Samaroo. "Further, as we've seen over the past few weeks, the crypto market downturn has had a massive impact on the viability of unregulated crypto trading platforms and WonderFi's value proposition as one of the few regulated crypto businesses makes us well positioned to continue our growth."

With this acquisition, WonderFi becomes the first company in Canada, and one of the first in the world, to own and operate multiple licensed crypto asset exchange platforms regulated by applicable securities commissions.

Coinberry also adds over 225,000 users and $99.5 million in client assets in custody as of March 31, 2022, giving the WonderFi group of companies over half a billion dollars in approximate total client assets under custody as of the acquisition.

WonderFi plans to realize significant cost synergies by integrating a variety of functions across its Coinberry and Bitbuy operations, developing cross-selling services and enhancing the user experience by continuing to innovate its suite of product offerings.

On July 15, WonderFi announced a partnership with the Meta Venture Capital Partnerships team, a division of Meta Platforms, Inc.

In order to help the most innovative firms scale, Meta Partnerships was founded in 2020. Its goal is to connect them with Meta's resources and brands, like Facebook and Instagram. WonderFi will receive strategic guidance from Meta Partnerships on matters such as marketing, performance, and business scale, as well as on collaborative strategies with other Meta departments and privacy-related regulations.