Fireblocks Denies Report Of $2.5 Billion Visa Takeover

Fireblocks Denies Acquisition Report

Fireblocks issued a public denial on Thursday to a report that the card network Visa is in late-stage negotiations to acquire the crypto custody and stablecoin infrastructure firm for roughly $2.5 billion. A company spokesperson said the takeover chatter was “news to us, and not true at present time.” The statement landed hours after a widely circulated report, citing multiple unnamed sources, claimed the two sides were close to signing. Visa, through its own spokesperson, said it does not comment on “rumors or speculation.” Had the transaction gone through, it would have been Visa's first acquisition in the stablecoin sector and one of the largest in crypto's history, behind Coinbase's $2.9 billion purchase of Deribit in 2025 and Naver Financial's pending $10.3 billion deal for Upbit parent Dunamu. No definitive agreement has been announced, and neither company has confirmed that negotiations are underway.

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Valuation Down 69% From 2022 Peak

The reported price would mark a steep markdown from the company's high-water mark. In January 2022, Fireblocks raised $550 million in a Series E round at an $8 billion valuation, then the highest for a digital asset infrastructure provider, with D1 Capital Partners, Spark Capital, General Atlantic, Index Ventures and Alphabet's CapitalG among the backers. Market data providers still carried that $8 billion figure as recently as December 11, 2025. The gap between the two numbers is roughly $5.5 billion, a 68.75% discount, though a private fundraising price and an acquisition price are not directly comparable, and the arithmetic does not establish what individual shareholders would receive in a sale. Separately, anonymous sources circulating sale chatter over the past three or four weeks had also named Coinbase Global as another party in the frame to buy the business. Coinbase had not commented by press time.

Custody Rails Behind $200 Billion a Month

Founded in 2018 by Israeli cybersecurity veterans Michael Shaulov, Pavel Berengoltz and Idan Ofrat, Fireblocks built its name on multi-party computation custody, a technique that splits the private keys securing digital assets across several parties so no single compromise can move funds. Its customers include BNY Mellon, Worldpay, Revolut and Galaxy, and the company says it has secured trillions of dollars in transfers across more than 150 blockchains. The business has pushed hard into stablecoin settlement and PayFi infrastructure: its payments network processes more than $200 billion in stablecoin transactions a month by its own figures, and stablecoins accounted for 69% of digital asset transaction volume on the platform in the second quarter of 2026. In July it integrated Circle's USDC Gateway into its institutional platform, and in August it appointed former acting SEC Chairman Elad Roisman to lead policy work.

Visa's Own Stablecoin Buildout

Visa (V) has been assembling stablecoin capabilities independently of the reported talks. In September the company said its stablecoin settlement volume had passed a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times the prior year's level, and on October 15 it introduced commercial USDC funding through Visa Direct, naming Inyo Global as the first participating processor. Its Stablecoin Platform, launched in July with the Open USD stablecoin, now sits behind more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs worldwide, and a partnership with Mesh extends crypto and stablecoin spending to more than 175 million merchant locations. The competitive backdrop explains the urgency: Mastercard agreed in March to buy stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion and closed the deal in August, while Zerohash, which Visa partnered with in August, is seeking a US national trust bank charter. Both card networks sit behind Open USD, a dollar stablecoin backed by a coalition of more than 140 companies.

Payments Giants Buy the Rails

Our reading: the denial narrows nothing about where the market is heading. Whether or not the $2.5 billion figure proves accurate, the episode shows payment incumbents are buying the custody and settlement layer rather than building it, and Fireblocks sits at the center of that infrastructure. The reported 69% markdown from the 2022 peak is a repricing of venture-cycle valuations, not evidence of a broken business, since stablecoin payments now dominate the platform's volume. Terms beyond the reported price, including deal structure and any regulatory review, remain undisclosed. Confirmation, a revised bid or a rival bidder such as Coinbase would be the next developments to watch.