Fireblocks Rejects Visa’s $2.5 Billion Acquisition Speculation

Fireblocks has refuted claims that Visa is engaged in advanced negotiations to acquire the institutional crypto custody and stablecoin infrastructure firm for roughly $2.5 billion.

“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,” the company told The Block on Thursday.

The rebuttal followed a report by Axios, which cited unnamed sources saying the parties were near a deal. Such a purchase would mark Visa’s inaugural entry into the stablecoin arena and rank among the biggest transactions in crypto history, eclipsed only by Coinbase’s $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit in 2025 and Naver Financial’s pending $10.3 billion acquisition of Dunamu’s parent company.

The proposed price represented a significant discount from the $8 billion valuation Fireblocks held in January 2022, when it secured $550 million in Series E funding at the height of the tech‑venture boom. Established in 2018 by former Israeli cybersecurity experts Michael Shaulov, Pavel Berengoltz and Idan Ofrat, the firm provides the underlying infrastructure that banks, exchanges and fintech platforms rely on for securing and transferring digital assets.

Notable clients such as BNY Mellon, Worldpay, Revolut and Galaxy entrust the platform, which reports handling trillions of dollars in transfers across more than 150 blockchain networks.

The service enables FIS’s institutional bitcoin trading, supports BNP Paribas’s digital‑asset custody operations, and is a founding member of the Botanix federation, a bitcoin sidechain initiative.

The crypto land grab

Regardless of the talks’ actual status, the story resonated in a market where payment providers in 2026 have favored acquiring or partnering with firms that manage stablecoin and crypto infrastructure rather than developing such capabilities in‑house.

Mastercard finalized a deal in March to acquire BVNK for as much as $1.8 billion, following aborted takeover discussions with Zerohash. The transaction closed in August, and Mastercard also obtained a New York BitLicense during that period.

Zerohash is concurrently pursuing a U.S. national trust bank charter.

In August, Visa formed a partnership with Zerohash to integrate stablecoin funding and payouts into Visa Direct. The company reported in September that its stablecoin settlement volume had exceeded a $20 billion annualized run‑rate, representing a more than 15‑fold increase year‑over‑year.

Both payment networks became part of a coalition of over 140 companies supporting Open USD, a dollar‑pegged stablecoin intended to broaden the $300 billion market’s reach beyond Tether and Circle.

Fireblocks introduced its own stablecoin payment network in September 2025, attracting more than 40 partners such as Circle, Bridge, Zerohash and Yellow Card. The firm also debuted acceptance solutions for neobanks this year, alongside a settlement platform designed for AI agents.

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