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The MasterCard logo on a smartphone disposed in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Mastercard has agreed to acquire blockchain analytics startup CipherTrace, in the latest sign of how large companies are warming to cryptocurrencies.
The payments giant said Thursday it has reached a deal to buy CipherTrace for an undisclosed amount. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., CipherTrace develops tools that help businesses and law enforcement eliminate illicit digital currency transactions. The firm’s competitors include New York-based Chainalysis and London-based start-up Elliptic.
“Digital assets have the potential to reinvent commerce, from everyday acts like paying and getting paid to transforming economies, making them more inclusive and efficient,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of cybersecurity and intelligence at Mastercard, in a press release. “With the rapid growth of the digital asset ecosystem, there is a need to ensure that it is reliable and secure. “
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mastercard shares were up about 0.6% Thursday morning in New York.
A major concern with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that the people who process them are anonymous. This has made digital assets the currency of choice for a number of hackers and other criminals. However, the blockchain is a public record of all digital currency transactions, and services like CipherTrace analyze fund movements to determine if they are questionable.
Mastercard said the deal would help its customers protect themselves and comply with regulations as they begin to develop their own digital currency offerings. CipherTrace claims that its platform is used by some of the largest banks and crypto exchanges in the world.
The deal is the latest sign of increased interest by large companies in the crypto market. Mastercard itself has said it will open its network to certain cryptocurrencies this year, while rival Visa recently revealed that more than $ 1 billion in crypto has been spent by consumers using its linked payment cards. to crypto.
Bitcoin was trading at around $ 47,000 on Thursday, up nearly 2% in the past 24 hours. The world’s largest digital coin fell sharply on Tuesday after El Salvador adopted it as legal tender.
Supporters of cryptocurrencies saw this development as a step towards wider adoption of the asset class. However, the deployment of bitcoin in El Salvador has not been without problems, with the country temporarily disabling its official bitcoin wallet to increase the capacity of its servers.
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