Two of Canada’s larger decentralized finance (DeFi) companies marked big gains in 2024.
Toronto-based DeFi Technologies reported that its assets under management jumped last year to $1.18 billion CAD, a 132 percent increase over 2023. That was a 900% growth from the market nadir at the end of 2022, according to the company.
The startup attributed the bull run to product and distribution upgrades as well as “rising investor demand” for regulated digital assets. The firm also made key acquisitions in 2024. It bought the liquidity provider Stillman Digital and ventured into AI-based asset management by making a majority investment in Neuronomics.
Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory in November coincided with a price spike of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other virtual currencies.
Fellow Toronto crypto company WonderFi, in turn, said its revenues more than doubled in 2024 to $62.1 million, an increase of 108 percent. The company pointed to several factors behind the growth. Its client assets under custody at its exchanges Bitbuy and Coinsquare surged 109 percent to reach $2.1 billion, while its in-house crypto platforms handled nearly $3.6 billion in trading volume through fiscal 2024, a 28 percent bump over 2023, WonderFi claimed.
The brand accomplished this in part by completing its acquisition of clients from Bitstamp, a Robin Hood-owned, Luxembourg-based crypto exchange that exited Canada last year. It also drove expansion in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region by completing the purchase of FX Institutions. The Canadian wing of a key competitor, Kraken, also reported topping $2 billion in assets under custody in November.
The prior year wasn’t completely smooth. Most notably, WonderFi CEO Dean Skurka was reportedly kidnapped and held for ransom in November.
RELATED: WonderFi plots expansion beyond crypto into multi-asset trading with Eightcap
The year was lucrative for the DeFi and crypto industries as a whole. While prices were already going up earlier in 2024, Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory in November coincided with a price spike of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other virtual currencies. Trump had promised more crypto-friendly policies, most recently including talk of a Fort Knox-style “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” of questionable utility.
Accordingly, both DeFi Technologies and WonderFi are optimistic about 2025. DeFi Technologies expected its revenue for the year to climb to $227.2 million, and noted that figure might grow if there are “proportional increases in revenue.”
WonderFi didn’t share a new outlook, but highlighted early 2025 expansion efforts. It bought Blade Labs’ technologies related to Solana cryptocurrency in January, and launched a consumer-facing crypto wallet app, Wonder Wallet, in February. Most recently, it unveiled plans in March to go beyond crypto with access to derivatives trading through Eightcap.
Image courtesy of André François McKenzie via Unsplash.