Fireblocks denies report of $2.5B Visa takeover talks

Crypto custody provider Fireblocks has denied a report that Visa is close to buying it for about $2.5 billion, CoinDesk reported on Thursday. The original story came from Axios, which cited multiple unnamed sources describing the talks as late-stage.

What each side said

• Fireblocks: "We are aware of the rumors about a possible acquisition of Fireblocks by Visa. This is news to us, and not true at present time," a spokesperson said shortly after the Axios story was published.
• Visa: a spokesperson told Cointelegraph the company does not comment on "rumors or speculation".
• Coinbase: CoinDesk had heard from anonymous sources over the past three to four weeks that Coinbase was also looking at Fireblocks. After CoinDesk's story ran, Coinbase denied any involvement.

Note the wording of the denial: "not true at present time" rules out a deal today, not necessarily talks in the future.

Why the price tag stands out

Fireblocks raised $550 million in a Series E round in January 2022 at a valuation of $8 billion. A sale at around $2.5 billion would value the company at less than a third of that peak. Private-market valuations across crypto were reset after the 2022 downturn, so a lower number would not be unusual, but it would still be one of the larger write-downs among crypto infrastructure firms.

What Fireblocks does

Fireblocks sells custody and transfer infrastructure to banks, exchanges, payment firms and fintechs. Its core technology is multi-party computation (MPC): instead of one private key stored in one place, the key is split into shares held by different parties, and a transaction can only be signed when enough of them cooperate. That removes the single point of failure a stolen key would create. If you want the basics of who controls keys in crypto, see our guide to custodial vs non-custodial wallets.

Why a payments giant would care

Card networks and banks have been moving into custody and stablecoin rails. Standard Chartered, for example, has just agreed to take full control of Zodia Custody, and Visa already settles some transactions in USDC. Owning a custody stack would give a payments company the plumbing to hold and move tokens for institutional clients directly. For now, though, the only on-record statements are a denial and a "no comment".