Institutional crypto custody and stablecoin infrastructure firm Fireblocks has formally denied widespread reports claiming that payment giant Visa is currently engaged in late-stage negotiations to acquire the company for approximately $2.5 billion.
The denial from Fireblocks arrived on Thursday following an exclusive report published by Axios, which cited multiple anonymous sources familiar with the matter to suggest that a deal was rapidly approaching. Had the acquisition materialized at the reported valuation, it would have marked Visa’s maiden venture into the stablecoin sector and cemented its place as one of the largest corporate buyouts in the history of the digital asset industry. It would have trailed only behind Coinbase’s $2.9 billion acquisition of bitcoin and crypto options platform Deribit in 2025 and Naver Financial’s pending $10.3 billion blockbuster deal for Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit.
"We are aware of the rumors about a possible acquisition of Fireblocks by Visa. This is news to us, and not true at the present time," a spokesperson for Fireblocks stated.
The rumored $2.5 billion price tag would have represented a dramatic valuation markdown for Fireblocks compared to its position during the height of the previous venture capital boom. In January 2022, the institutional infrastructure provider commanded an impressive $8 billion valuation when it successfully closed a massive $550 million Series E funding round.
Fireblocks was founded in 2018 by Michael Shaulov, Pavel Berengoltz, and Idan Ofrat—three seasoned veterans of the Israeli cybersecurity sector. The company functions as vital behind-the-scenes plumbing for the traditional financial and digital asset ecosystems, providing the underlying software infrastructure that institutional heavyweights, global commercial banks, major cryptocurrency exchanges, and innovative fintech firms utilize to securely store, transfer, and manage digital assets.
The company’s roster of prominent enterprise customers includes legacy financial institutions like BNY Mellon and BNP Paribas, alongside digital asset leaders such as Galaxy, major payment processors like Worldpay, and neobanking pioneers like Revolut. According to public metrics provided by the firm, Fireblocks’ infrastructure has successfully secured trillions of dollars in transactional volume and asset transfers across more than 150 distinct blockchains.
Furthermore, Fireblocks plays an integral role in powering broader institutional financial initiatives across the globe. Its robust technology stack underpins FIS’s institutional bitcoin trading platform, powers BNP Paribas’s digital asset custody solutions, and serves a foundational role as one of the founding members of the Botanix federation, an ambitious bitcoin sidechain project.
The Crypto Land Grab
Regardless of the actual status of the rumored acquisition talks between Visa and Fireblocks, the publication of the report landed on exceptionally fertile ground within the broader global financial technology sector. Throughout 2026, major payment incumbents have increasingly shifted their corporate strategies from building internal blockchain capabilities from scratch to outright buying or tightly courting the specialized infrastructure providers that currently handle stablecoin and crypto rails.
This aggressive consolidation trend has reshaped the competitive landscape of digital finance. In March of this year, Mastercard agreed to acquire BVNK for a staggering valuation of up to $1.8 billion, following the collapse of earlier takeover talks with Zerohash. Mastercard subsequently finalized that acquisition in August and successfully secured a coveted New York BitLicense along the way. Meanwhile, Zerohash has pursued its own strategic initiatives within the traditional banking sector, actively seeking a U.S. national trust bank charter to expand its operational footprint.
Visa has similarly accelerated its engagement with digital assets and blockchain infrastructure. In August, the card network partnered directly with Zerohash to integrate stablecoin funding and payout capabilities natively into Visa Direct. Shortly after, in September, Visa reported that its annualized stablecoin settlement volume had decisively surpassed the $20 billion threshold—representing an astonishing expansion of more than 15 times the volume recorded during the prior year.
As part of their broader industry alignment, both Visa and Mastercard joined an expansive coalition of more than 140 corporate entities supporting Open USD. This newly introduced dollar-backed stablecoin is specifically engineered to distribute the economic advantages of an expanding $300 billion market well beyond the current dominance of major issuers like Tether and Circle.
Fireblocks has continued to aggressively expand its own product ecosystem amidst this hyper-competitive environment. In September 2025, the firm launched its proprietary stablecoin payments network with the backing of over 40 initial participants, including industry heavyweights such as Circle, Bridge, Zerohash, and Yellow Card. Building upon this momentum, Fireblocks rolled out specialized acceptance tools tailored for neobanks earlier this year, alongside an advanced settlement suite specifically designed to facilitate transactions for autonomous artificial intelligence agents.
Leave a Reply