Interview by Aoyon Ashraf. Dean Skurka is speaking at the AI Summit at Consensus 2025, Toronto, May 16.
When Dean Skurka joined Bitbuy in 2018, the platform had only four employees, a few thousand users, and about $25 million in trading volume. Fast-forward to today, Skurka now oversees WonderFi: A company that’s consolidated multiple Canadian exchanges, boasts 1.7 million accounts, and guards $2 billion in client assets.
But Skurka isn’t just sitting on a domestic empire—he’s building outward.
In a conversation with CoinDesk, WonderFi's president and CEO, Dean Skurka, detailed his company's next chapter: launching a Layer-2 blockchain in partnership with zkSync and expanding into Australia, a country he says “checks both boxes” of regulatory clarity and strong adoption. He also discussed the outlook for centralized exchanges and how Canada's crypto landscape is changing.
The centralized exchange said in February that it is launching a Layer 2 blockchain based on ZKsync to connect its users to decentralized finance (DeFi).
"When we think about the long-term trend across the industry, we see a really strong synergy between centralized exchanges, where the users are originating or the assets are originating, and giving them a seamless bridge to everything that's happening on chain today."
Skurka says WonderFi's knowledge of running trading platforms, regulatory credibility, and asset base gives it an edge over a plethora of other Layer 2s connecting DeFi.
Unlike some other rival Layer 2 chains launched with splashy token incentives or VC hype, Skurka says WonderFi’s approach is more grounded and long-lasting. It plans to foster long-term use through builder incentives, hackathons and ecosystem support.
Rather than viewing decentralized exchanges as competitors for centralized exchanges, Skurka sees them as extensions. Centralized exchanges provide the bridge for first-time users to go from buying and selling crypto on regulated and trusted platforms to on-chain activities that open up more innovative new products that exist in the crypto ecosystem.
"[Centralized exchanges] are building out the components that will allow their users to seamlessly interact on chain, but at the same time building up the the capabilities on the exchange side to look more akin to traditional financial service products, which we think will create incremental value on both sides over the next 5 to 10 years," he said.
FULL INTERVIEW.
