WonderFi expands to Australia — Blockchain Futurist Conference

The crypto firm merged with Coinsmart and Coinsquare in 2023, securing $1 billion in assets under management in the same year.

Dean Skurka, president and CEO of WonderFi, and Tim Lo, the firm’s head of the Australia and Asia Pacific (APAC) markets, joined Cointelegraph at this year’s Blockchain Futurist Conference in Canada to discuss the company’s recently announced expansion into Australia and the future of the crypto industry.

Skurka explained that the company’s expansion into Australia represents its first foray into global expansion. According to the CEO, WonderFi chose Australia because of its similar demographics and regulatory policies to Canada. Similar licensing requirements made expanding to Australia more “seamless,” Skurka said. The CEO touched on the company’s long-term approach toward servicing markets:

“We are embracing a regulatory-first mindset with respect to the markets that we enter. We, as a public company, want to invest in markets where we have the confidence we’ll be able to service them for a long period of time.”

WonderFi’s CEO continued by stating that crypto adoption is growing, expressing optimism that more consumers now feel comfortable conducting onchain transactions and predicting the progression of more intuitive user interfaces in crypto applications.

Related: Canada needs to overhaul crypto regulations — Coinbase exec

It’s still the early days of crypto

WonderFi APAC markets head Lo expressed his belief that the crypto industry and markets are still in the early days and predicted that large institutional investors will allocate a significant portion of their investment portfolios to digital assets as the industry matures.

“Sooner or later, we’re going to see a lot of the pension plans, a lot of the government funds, start putting actual proper asset allocation into crypto. I think that’s when the market is going to be mature, but we’re far away from that.”

Lo argued that while crypto markets are still 33% down from the previous all-time high, markets will eventually reach new highs, driven by the introduction of crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States and the demand for these products from institutional investors. 

Retail interest in crypto markets poised to grow

Earlier in June, Skurka argued that interest rate cuts by the Bank of Canada and the launch of crypto ETFs in the United States were driving retail investors to the digital asset markets.

However, the CEO said these were merely early signals and that retail investors would not enter the markets overnight but over the next six to 12 months. 

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