WonderFi expands to Australia — Blockchain Futurist Conference

Dean Skurka, President and CEO of WonderFi, and the firm's head of the Australia and Asia Pacific markets (APAC), Tim Lo, joined Cointelegraph at this year's Blockchain Futurist Conference in Canada to discuss the company's recently announced expansion into Australia and the future of the crypto industry.

The WonderFi CEO explained that the company’s expansion into Australia represents its first foray into global expansion. According to Skurka, WonderFi chose Australia because of similar demographics and regulatory policies in Canada. Similar licensing requirements made expanding to Australia more "seamless,” Skurka said. WonderFi's CEO touched on the company's long-term approach toward servicing markets:

"We are embracing a regulatory-first mindset with respect to the markets that we enter. We as a public company want to invest in markets where we have the confidence we'll be able to service them for a long period of time."

WonderFi’s CEO continued by stating that crypto adoption is growing, expressing optimism that more consumers now feel comfortable conducting onchain transactions and predicting the progression of more intuitive user interfaces in crypto applications.

We are still in the early days of crypto

Head of WonderFi's APAC markets Tim Lo expressed his belief that the crypto industry and markets are still in the early days and predicted that large institutional investors will allocate a significant portion of their investment portfolios to digital assets as the industry matures.

"Sooner or later, we're going to see a lot of the pension plans, a lot of the government funds, start putting actual proper asset allocation into crypto. I think that's when the market is going to be immature, but we're far away from that."

Lo argued that crypto markets are still 33% down from the previous all-time high and believes markets will eventually reach new highs, driven by the introduction of crypto ETFs in the United States and the demand for these products from institutional investors.

Retail interest in crypto markets poised to grow

Earlier in June, Dean Skurka argued that interest rate cuts by the Bank of Canada and the launch of crypto ETFs in the United States were driving retail investors to the digital asset markets.

However, the CEO explained that these were merely early signals and that retail investors would not enter the markets overnight but over the next 6-12 months.