According to a Thursday report, Coinsquare and WonderFi, two of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, are preparing to announce their merger. If the deal goes through, it would create the new largest exchange in the country with an estimated 1.15 million users.
Coinsquare and WonderFi Might Announce Merger in Just a Few Days
According to a report from January 12th, two of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, WonderFi and Coinsquare are in “advanced merger talks” and could make an official announcement in a few days’ time. While the details on the merger are still somewhat murky, if the deal goes through, it would mark the creation of the new largest cryptocurrency exchange in Canada with well over 1 million users.
WonderFi is a publicly traded exchange with around 650,000 users and more than $250 million worth of assets under management. Similar to many other firms, the price of its stock took a similar beating throughout 2022 and is more than 50% down from the initial value standing at 0.30 Canadian dollars at the time of writing.
Since Coinquare is a privately owned company, the value of its assets under management is unknown at the time of writing, but the exchange reported it has around half a million users. In September, Coinsquare announced its planned acquisition of CoinSmart, a cryptocurrency trading platform, but shelved the deal in early 2023.
Major Mergers and Acquisitions Throughout the “Crypto Winter”
As 2022 hit the broader digital assets sector hard, numerous firms have gone through various merger agreements both in hopes of getting bailed out and of strengthening their positions to better weather the storm. Perhaps most notably, FTX went on what has widely been termed a “spending spree” throughout the Summer of 2022 as numerous companies filed for bankruptcy in the wake of the LUNA collapse.
FTX’s buying frenzy was forcefully cut short in early November when it filed for bankruptcy after a slew of revelations regarding questionable activities like the misappropriation of users’ assets to prop up its sister-company Alameda Research. For less than a day in November, it appeared as if FTX international would itself become the target of a rescue acquisition before Binance pulled out the LOI after completing the first phases of corporate due diligence.
After giving up on the FTX acquisition, Binance stepped in to take over some of SBF’s previously planned purchases. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange got initial approval to buy the bankrupt Voyager Digital after the SEC filed a limited objection to the deal citing insufficient information in the provided documentation.
This article originally appeared on The Tokenist
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