WonderFi founder says Canada’s climate for innovation pushed the company into a Robinhood sale

WonderFi founder and former CEO Karia Samaroo said the company’s C$250 million sale to Robinhood Markets was not a result of weak prospects, but of structural limits in Canada that make it hard for domestic tech firms to scale. Samaroo said WonderFi, founded in 2021, spent several years consolidating Canada’s fragmented crypto market, building a national brand, and surviving major industry shocks including the collapse of QuadrigaCX, the failure of FTX, and a strict domestic regulatory regime. By 2023, he said, WonderFi had become a leading crypto platform in Canada. Samaroo argued that success inside Canada was never the company’s end goal. WonderFi had aimed to become a global business, while Robinhood viewed the firm as a strategic entry point into the Canadian market. He also pointed to broader problems in Canada, including limited venture capital, weak public markets, fragmented regulation, and declining incentives for founders. In crypto, he said, those pressures are even sharper because tougher post-QuadrigaCX rules have raised operating costs. He added that Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Gemini had all entered Canada and later exited. Fortune cited Samaroo’s remarks.