Concerns over Canada’s economic sovereignty in financial institutions has a public policy expert calling for consumer protection after a mammoth deal is set to be approved for a U.S. company to take over a Canadian cryptocurrency firm.
Digital asset platform WonderFi Technologies recently announced it will be acquired by Robinhood Markets Inc., a U.S. fintech company for $250 million, after the Supreme Court of British Columbia signed off on the transaction. Robinhood would now have Bitbuy, Coinsquare and more than $2.1 billion in assets under its control.
“WonderFi already consolidated a lot of digital exchanges in Canada to achieve their size, but now that we’re probably losing it to the U.S., it’s hard to get elements like that back,” Vass Bednar, managing director of Canadian SHIELD Institute for Public Policy told BNN Bloomberg in a Thursday interview. “One person likened it to selling off the Toronto Stock Exchange, but in terms of size, it would be kind of similar to allowing the U.S. to purchase the Big Five Canadian banks, and then saying to citizens “well, you have other choices, right?” Which you do, but they’re not comparable, or not yet comparable, in terms of scale and size.”
Bednar wants Canada to reduce U.S. influence and foster economic influence at home. She co-authored The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians. The book details how corporate concentration is growing across many industries.
WonderFi owns Coinberry, Bitvo Inc., Coinsquare, CoinSmart and Bitbuy. Bednar said WonderFi is one of the last major Canadian owned players in the digital platform space.
She is especially worried as U.S. President Donald Trump continues his tariffs trade war while spearheading legislation to create a regulatory regime for stablecoins, a U.S.-dollar pegged cryptocurrency, paving the way for digital assets in everyday transactions.
“I don’t think we can ignore we are in a trade war, and in this very kind of hostile, volatile environment, we’re seeing President Trump move to sort of encode U.S. stablecoin dominance,” said Bednar. “That’s why I think potentially giving a second look to this merger, or just putting it in that context, is really important for us”.
Bednar said the Bank of Canada has shelved work on regulating digital assets stablecoins in the country but says many are hoping the central bank will give it a second look to clarify a path forward.
“We kind of can’t afford to keep waiting,” said Bednar. “We often take a wait and see approach, which is not the worst thing in the universe, but when you’re dealing with a new economy, you have to be brave too, and you have to sort of get out there and put forward proposals and be maybe a little bit scrappier from a regulatory perspective. I think the GENIUS act certainly forces Canada to try to do that.”
