It’s another another evidence of how big corporations are warming up to cryptocurrencies that Mastercard has agreed to purchase blockchain analytics startup CipherTrace.
For an unknown sum, the payments giant said on Thursday that it has entered into a deal to buy CipherTrace. Its headquarters are at Menlo Park in California, where CipherTrace develops tools to assist companies and law enforcement in tracking down unauthorized activities involving digital money. In addition to Chainalysis, the firm faces competition from London-based Elliptic.
An official from Mastercard stated that digital assets have the ability to reinvent commerce from everyday activities like paying and being paid to altering economies so that they are more inclusive and efficient. When it comes to trust and safety, the digital asset ecosystem’s fast expansion creates a pressing requirement.
Details of the deal’s financials were not made public. On Thursday morning in New York, Mastercard’s stock was up approximately 0.6 percent.
The anonymous nature of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is a major problem. As a result, hackers and other criminals have turned to digital assets as their preferred currency. As a public log of all digital currency transactions, however, services like CipherTrace’s examine fund movements to determine whether they’re suspect.
In a statement, Mastercard said the agreement will assist its clients protect themselves and comply with rules as they begin to build up their own digital currency products, including bitcoin. This platform is utilized by some of the world’s top banks and crypto exchange companies, according to CipherTrace Inc.
Major corporations are increasingly interested in the crypto industry, as seen by this acquisition. Earlier this year, Mastercard said that it will open its network to select cryptocurrencies, while Visa recently revealed that users have bought more than $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency using its crypto-linked payment cards in the first quarter of 2018.
Around $47,000 was the price of bitcoin on Thursday, up roughly 2% in the past 24 hours. Heavily depreciated on Tuesday when El Salvador made it legal tender.
Bitcoin proponents hailed the decision as a step toward a wider adoption of the asset class in general. In spite of this, El Salvador’s bitcoin rollout was not without problems, as the nation briefly disabled its official bitcoin wallet to boost server capacity.
