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Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is continuing to gain traction and DeFi protocols are raising millions to offer retail investors better access to the growing market. Ribbon Finance, a protocol that makes it easier for investors to benefit from the complicated world of crypto derivatives, just raised $8.8 million after partnering with Paradigm to build new risk products native to DeFi and double down on the project’s multi-chain approach. At the same time, Struct Finance raised $3.9 million to develop structured products in DeFi, which the company will use to build the tools allowing institutions to easily customize interest rate products and to combine them with options to build structured products that are better suited to the profiles of different investors. Structured products in DeFi allow investors of various risk profiles to participate in the DeFi ecosystem thus boosting investor interest in DeFi. WonderFi Technologies (NEO: WNDR) (OTC:WONDF), Bit Digital Inc. (NASDAQ:BTBT), Bitfarms Ltd. (NASDAQ:BITF) (TSXV:BITF), Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN), and HIVE Blockchain Technologies (NASDAQ:HIVE) (TSXV:HIVE) are benefitting from the growing interest in DeFi and crypto.
WonderFi Technologies (NEO: WNDR) (OTC:WONDF), a leading technology company with the mission of creating better access to digital assets through compliant centralized and decentralized platforms, announced on April 18 that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Coinberry Limited. The transaction is valued at approximately $38.6 million.
Founded in 2017, Coinberry has become one of Canada’s leading crypto trading platforms. It includes 29 of the top cryptocurrency trading pairs and services from over 220,000 users. Coinberry earned over $13.2 million in revenue for the year ending December 31, 2021.
WonderFi CEO Ben Samaroo commented, “This acquisition further establishes WonderFi as a leader amongst crypto companies in Canada, and along with our acquisition of Bitbuy, establishes a great framework for our expansion into global markets in 2022. As we continue our consolidation of leading licensed crypto platforms, our user count, revenue and pool of talent continues to grow.”
“WonderFi’s management team continues to execute on accretive acquisitions and this is an extremely important one, because it shows the speed and vision behind WonderFi’s plan. Compliant access to crypto is what matters and WonderFi has quickly established itself as a leader in Canada. Next stop, global,” said Kevin O’Leary, strategic investor in WonderFi.
The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.
Canaccord Genuity published a research report on April 13 on WonderFi discussing the company’s corporate strategy and financials.
On March 25, WonderFi announced that it has closed the acquisition of First Ledger Corp., the parent company of leading cryptocurrency platform and the first approved crypto marketplace in Canada, BitBuy. The combined company, which now boasts over 120 employees will be exclusively focused on introducing new features, offerings and functionality, creating Canada’s largest talent pool of crypto tech professionals.
“The integration of WonderFi Technologies and Bitbuy is a huge step forward in our mission of democratizing finance through easy and secure access to DeFi and crypto,” said Ben Samaroo, CEO of WonderFi Technologies. “A licensed marketplace serves as a crucial gateway to the digital asset economy, and facilitates a robust end-to-end, unified client experience.”
The acquisition makes WonderFi the owner of Canada’s largest approved crypto marketplace and one of fastest growing crypto platforms and diversifies its business lines to include a regulated crypto marketplace, OTC business and liquidity provider that services retail, corporate and institutional clients. The deal also introduces a strong front-end business line and enables licensed fiat on-ramp and other features amidst growing market demand.
WonderFi also recently revealed the fast growth of collective users across the WonderFi ecosystem, with a total of over 600,000 users upon the closing of the Bitbuy and Sun Machine acquisitions.
For more information about WonderFi Technologies Inc. (NEO: WNDR) (OTC:WONDF) click here.
Crypto Companies Report Production Numbers
On March 15, Bit Digital Inc. (NASDAQ:BTBT), a New York-based bitcoin mining company, announced bitcoin production and mining operations updates for the fourth quarter of 2021. During the quarter and after the end of the year, Bit Digital continued to work with its hosting partners to deploy miners. In Q4 2021, Bit Digital earned 240.57 newly minted bitcoins, which is similar to Q3 results. The decrease from previous quarters is primarily due to the miner migration and redeployments to its North American hosting partners’ facilities. Bitcoin production is expected to increase following the full redeployment of the company’s miners in North America and the end of announced miner purchases.
Bitfarms Ltd. (NASDAQ:BITF) (TSXV:BITF) a global bitcoin self-mining company, has begun production at The Bunker, located in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The Bunker is being built in three phases, the first of which is completed and the initial capacity of 12 megawatts (MW) is available and in use since the previous deliveries of miners are already installed. The Bunker increases farms by generation at eight and total capacity at 118 MW. Once construction is complete, the bunker is expected to be a 48 MW facility housing 13,000 miners and should deliver 1,300 petahash per second (PH/s). Phases two and three, each representing 18 MW, are progressing as planned, with completion expected in Q2-2022 and Q3-2022, respectively.
Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN) released in February a shareholder letter reporting the company’s Q4 and full-year 2021 financial results. The company said it ended 2021 with a strong performance in key metrics that were within its outlook. Millions of new users joined the cryptoeconomy in 2021 through Coinbase, which generated $7.4 billion in net revenue, including $2.5 billion in the fourth quarter. Coinbase, which became the first publicly traded crypto asset trading platform, has made substantial progress in building world-class infrastructure to enable easy, safe and secure access and access to the global crypto economy.
On March 8, HIVE Blockchain Technologies (NASDAQ:HIVE) (TSXV:HIVE) announced production figures for the company’s global Bitcoin and Ethereum mining operations for the month of February 2022. BTC HODL balance was 2,374 Bitcoin as of February 28, 2022.
HIVE produced an average of 8.7 BTC per day in February. The ETH that HIVE produced during that month, matched daily, is approximately equal to a monthly total of 132.6 BTC, which the company refers to as Bitcoin equivalent or BTC equivalent. Bitcoin mining operations produced 244.4 BTC in February, for a total of 377.1 Bitcoin equivalent. On March 7, the company announced a supply agreement with Intel Corporation to purchase new high-performance ASIC chips that will be integrated into state-of-the-art mining equipment that will be custom-built for HIVE. The company also signed a letter of intent with Compute North LLC to host 100 megawatts of mining capacity at one of their new renewable energy data centers in Texas.
As crypto mining efforts continue to ramp up to meet the market demand, WonderFi is creating better access to digital assets through compliant centralized and decentralized platforms.
Featured Image: DepositPhotos @ perig76