Mastercard acquires CipherTrace to boost crypto security and compliance

Payment services company Mastercard has acquired blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace to bolster its own cyber security tools and to better comply with crypto regulatory guidelines, according to an announcement on Thursday. The amount offered for the acquisition remains undisclosed. 

“With the rapid growth of the digital asset ecosystem comes the need to ensure it is trusted and safe,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard, in the statement. “Our aim is to build upon the complementary capabilities of Mastercard and CipherTrace to do just this.”

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In addition to gathering data in the crypto space, CipherTrace publishes yearly reports about the trends in the crypto ecosystem and has built compliance tools for decentralized exchanges. 

CipherTrace, however, has a smaller influence in the blockchain surveillance arena than firms Chainalysis or Elliptic. According to data compiled by The Block Research, CipherTrace brings in 0.67% and 9.21% of federal contract payments compared to Chainalysis and Elliptic respectively.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.