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.

Here is an edited and shortened version of his conversation with CoinDesk, ahead of his appearance at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

Layer 2 push

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.

Centralized vs decentralized exchanges

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.

Evolution of crypto in Canada

WonderFi is a dominant exchange in Canada, and able to observe how the crypto landscape is changing in the country.

Canada has a strong crypto history—Ethereum and the first spot bitcoin ETF were both born there. It was also one of the first countries to have a regulatory framework for crypto trading platforms.

«Some of the more innovative products and services that exist within this space have moved offshore or outside of Canada because of the lack of clarity around those products and services,» he said, pointing to products such as DeFi applications, Layer 2 blockchains and derivatives.

WonderFi is now aiming to change that, after working closely with Canadian regulators to create trading and staking guidelines.

«We are working hand in hand with regulators to give them comfort on some of these newer, more innovative products and services, and hopefully that will encourage entrepreneurs, builders, developers, to really stay in Canada and build products with confidence,» Skurka added.

And with the U.S. now becoming more open to crypto and many exchange-traded funds open to investors, the mindset in Canada is starting to shift as well. WonderFi, which has been a mostly retail-dominated platform, is now seeing interest from Canadian institutional investors such as family offices and private equities who want exposure to digital assets.

«​​I think that’s been a really big shift over the last year, and that’s something [institutional investors’ interest] that we expect to really accelerate in the next few years,» Skurka said.

Australia and beyond

Skurka isn’t stopping at Canada; he is looking to expand his company’s reach to other regions, starting with Australia—a country Skurka describes as having “clear, concise regulation” and a strong crypto adoption rate.

«Australia was a really good market for us to target initially, and from there, we’ll really look for other markets,» Skurka said.

The mighty volatility

Like the crypto’s 24/7 nature, a CEO’s job in this fast-paced industry is never done.

In Skurka’s case, it’s exactly what keeps him up at night: volatility— something that shapes the industry perception and sentiments.

«It’s probably just the short-term volatility that really impacts the outlook on the business and has an impact on the users, the staff, and the team morale. And so it’s really just something that we really look to to balance as best we can,» Skurka said.

But having been in the industry since 2018 and navigating extreme ups and downs, he’s learned to ride out the volatility.

«I think we have a really good handle on it, and we’ve got a really strong team that understands the 24-hour nature of this business—the volatility of this business—and we’re in a really good spot,» Skurka added.

Arizona has broken new ground in what’s been a race among U.S. states to see which may become first to set up a crypto reserve as a formal part of their fiscal strategy, getting legislation approved with mostly Republican lawmakers in support.

It’s unclear whether Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, will look favorably on the legislation that was rejected by most Democratic lawmakers. She has vetoed a long list of bills in this session, and if she vetoes this, too, the matter is closed for the year.

If it were approved, Arizona’s inclusion of digital assets in its public-funds investments could even outpace the U.S. Treasury Department’s effort to get it done, which still awaits a full accounting of the U.S. holdings before federal officials can move to build the reserve that President Donald Trump has called for.

With the Arizona House of Representatives passing the crypto reserve effort in a 31-25 vote on Monday — three Democrats voted in favor — the state surged past others considering similar measures, including New Hampshire, where a bill has passed its House.

But Hobbs has been in a budget dispute with Republican lawmakers.

«Any bill not already on my desk will be vetoed until we have a serious, bipartisan funding solution that protects health care for Arizonans with disabilities,» the governor had said in an April 17 posting on social media site X. That matter may have been resolved with her signature on a disabilities-funding bill last week.

Base, the popular layer-2 network from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), is now a “stage 1” rollup, said the company, setting up its path towards full decentralization.

The transition to a “stage 1” rollup comes as other layer-2s have also reached that milestone, making these networks less reliant on centralized entities.

The move means that Base will now have a security council, a network of ten “independent entities, which we chose from all around the globe,” said Tom Vieira, the head of product at Base, in an interview with CoinDesk. “These are folks from the Base ecosystem and from the broader Ethereum ecosystem,” who will help approve certain network upgrades if needed, Vieira added.

In addition, fault proofs are permissionless now on Base, meaning anyone can verify or check the state of transactions from the network without relying on a central entity.

Achieving the so-called stage 1 rollup status stems from a blog post from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, where he categorized platforms according to their degree of decentralization, with stage 1 relying on certain guardrails or «limited training wheels”, and sacrificing on certain elements of decentralization for security and speed.

Buterin originally shared this framework in 2022 when rollups started becoming more popular. A few years later, he expressed his concerns around their security, so he wrote on X that he would only publicly talk about a layer-2 network if it had reached (at least) stage 1.

Base was launched by centralized exchange Coinbase in August 2022, and since then has become the largest rollup, according to L2Beat, with $11.72 billion locked in the protocol. Now, the largest layer-2 network will be less reliant on Coinbase itself.

Read more: Coinbase’s Layer 2 System Base Gets a Marketplace Linked to Gas Revenue