If Robinhood's proposed acquisition of WonderFi is approved, the U.S. fintech company would gain control of Bitbuy and Coinsquare as well as more than $2.1-billion in assets under custody.Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Vass Bednar is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail and host of the podcast Lately. She is the managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute and co-author of The Big Fix.
So far, much of our conversation around sovereignty has focused on the tangible, like shifting our own spending toward made-in-Canada products or rescheduling a summer vacation. It’s not enough.
If mindful consumption was the first front, the next phase of sovereignty means saying no to mergers that hollow out national infrastructure. Earlier this year, the federal government gave itself more power to do just that. It’s already time to use it.
Regulators must carefully review the proposed acquisition of WonderFi Technologies Inc., a Canadian digital asset platform, by Robinhood Markets Inc., a U.S. fintech company. If approved, Robinhood would gain control of Bitbuy and Coinsquare (two of the largest regulated crypto exchanges in Canada) as well as more than $2.1-billion in assets under custody.
This is not a marginal transaction. WonderFi is one of the last major Canadian-owned players in the space, built through a series of domestic acquisitions (Coinberry, Bitvo Inc., Coinsquare, CoinSmart and Bitbuy have all merged under WonderFi). Approving the deal would mean ceding a critical piece of homegrown infrastructure just as the sector is maturing.
Robinhood’s past controversies, like the infamous GameStop saga and ongoing SEC scrutiny, raise serious questions about how well it would operate under Canadian regulatory expectations. Its entry into our market could strain oversight systems and diminish public trust in Canada’s ability to govern digital finance.
More concerning, this move must be considered in the context of the recent Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or GENIUS, Act. The American law hardwires the U.S. dollar into stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to an underlying asset. It establishes U.S. dominance of the future of global commerce.
As Robinhood moves deeper into stablecoins and U.S.-dollar–denominated digital payments, its presence in Canada could accelerate “digital dollarization,” according to a report by Morgan Stanley, diminishing the Bank of Canada’s influence over monetary policy and payment innovation. In short, this merger risks outsourcing a key layer of the digital payments economy to a platform optimized for growth, not governance.
Worse still, allowing this acquisition to proceed without rigorous scrutiny could set a troubling precedent: That Canada is open to losing ownership of financial platforms that serve millions. It would signal a weakening of our long-term capacity to build and host sovereign financial tools and nurture a fintech ecosystem aligned with domestic values and oversight. Once lost, these capacities are hard to recover.
We’ve said no before in order to protect our interests. When Australia’s BHP Billiton attempted a US$39-billion hostile takeover of PotashCorp – a crown jewel of Canadian mining – then Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall rallied public opinion, and Ottawa ultimately blocked the deal under the Investment Canada Act. It was one of the rare moments when Canada asserted resource sovereignty and won.
We’ve stood our ground in other sectors, too. In 1998, then-finance minister Paul Martin blocked two proposed mergers between Canada’s largest banks (Royal Bank of Canada with Bank of Montreal, and CIBC with TD Bank) arguing that the deals were not in the public interest. At the time, it was a bold move and remains a reminder that economic sovereignty sometimes means saying no.
Opinion: Canada was once a global leader in crypto. It can be one again
We’ve also been leaders in the blockchain and crypto innovation space: Canada is the birthplace of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency platform in the world by market capitalization. Co-founded by Canadian Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum has become foundational to the global decentralized finance ecosystem. But like many Canadian-origin innovations, it didn’t stay here. Its governance, infrastructure and economic impact now largely operate beyond our borders.
Canada has spent a century building institutions to reflect our values (often in times of crisis): Central banks, public broadcasters, a national energy policy. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants U.S. companies to be able to purchase Canadian banks. Robinhood’s proposed merger can’t be considered outside of this context.
In this hostile and volatile geopolitical moment, it may be in Canada’s national interest to review and potentially block the merger, but the strong negative mood affiliation with cryptocurrency could hinder our ability to appreciate the firm as a form of financial infrastructure.
And WonderFi’s dramatic governance history adds to the perception of chaos, further complicating any policy defence of its role in the ecosystem. With no comparable digital finance platforms at a similar scale, it may also be prudent for the Bank of Canada to revisit its previously shelved work on stablecoins and reconsider the broader implications for digital financial infrastructure.
Sovereignty isn’t just about what we buy; it’s about what we build, what we keep and who gets to decide what comes next.