Fireblocks disputes Axios report that Visa is in talks to buy it for about $2.5 billion

Fireblocks, the crypto custody and infrastructure company, disputed on Thursday 22 October a report that Visa is in late-stage talks to buy it for about $2.5 billion. The report came from Axios Pro Fintech Deals, citing multiple unnamed sources. A Fireblocks spokesperson answered that the report was “news to us, and not true at present time.” Visa declined to comment.

If the talks exist and lead somewhere, the deal would be Visa’s first acquisition in crypto infrastructure, according to Axios. It would also put a price on Fireblocks about 69% below the $8 billion valuation the company reached in its last disclosed funding round, in January 2022.

For now, the whole story rests on one report. CoinDesk, The Block, Cointelegraph, Bitcoin Magazine and a string of aggregators all picked up the Axios scoop within hours, but none of them published sources of its own on the Visa talks. Repetition is not confirmation. The only independent element so far is the Fireblocks statement, and it pushes back.

What the Axios report on Visa and Fireblocks says

The Axios piece sits behind the paywall of its Pro service, and Coindaro could not read it. What is known of its content comes from the outlets that cite it and from the page’s public summary: Visa and Fireblocks are said to be in “late-stage” talks, the price is about $2.5 billion, and the information comes from several people who are not named. The page was later updated with Fireblocks’ comment and with a note that Visa declined to comment.

Several things are missing. No deal terms have been published, no timetable, no split between cash and Visa stock, no document.

One detail adds to the fog. The address of the Axios page reads “2-billion”, while its headline, and every outlet that quotes it, give about $2.5 billion. None of them comments on the gap, and Axios has not explained it. This article uses the figure in the text. Some aggregators also wrote that the companies were in “final stages” of talks: that is a paraphrase, not the wording Axios used as reported by the outlets that cite it.

Fireblocks’ denial keeps the words “at present time”

The full statement, given by an unnamed Fireblocks spokesperson to The Block and to Cointelegraph, and quoted the same way by CoinDesk, reads: “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.”

That is a dispute of the report, not a closed door. “Not true at present time” says there are no such talks today, or at least none the company will acknowledge. It does not say Fireblocks is not for sale, and it says nothing about the future. Read narrowly, it is also compatible with talks that have not yet reached the stage Axios described. Coindaro found no statement on Fireblocks’ own website and no post on X from its chief executive, Michael Shaulov; the denial exists only as a spokesperson’s words relayed by the press.

Visa’s reply was shorter. “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” a spokesperson told The Block; Cointelegraph got the same answer, that Visa does not comment on “rumors or speculation”. CoinDesk said Visa did not respond to its requests for comment. Visa has therefore neither confirmed nor denied anything, which is the usual line of a listed company asked about a possible acquisition.

CoinDesk says Coinbase was also mentioned, and Coinbase denies it

CoinDesk went one step further. It wrote that talk of a possible sale of Fireblocks had been circulating for three or four weeks, and that anonymous sources had told it Coinbase was also in the frame as a buyer. In an update stamped 15:24 UTC on 22 October, CoinDesk added that Coinbase denied being involved in a possible transaction after the story was published. CoinDesk gives no wording from Coinbase, and none of the other outlets cited here mentions Coinbase, so this point rests on CoinDesk’s unnamed sources alone.

Why $2.5 billion would be about 69% below Fireblocks’ valuation

Fireblocks raised $550 million in a Series E round announced in January 2022, at a valuation of $8 billion. The Block, Bitcoin Magazine and the French site Coin Academy give that figure, Cointelegraph writes “more than $8 billion”, and no newer priced round has been reported since. Cointelegraph notes that the Tracxn database still lists $8 billion “as of” December 2025, but that is the date of a database entry, not a new round.

The gap is simple arithmetic on those two numbers: $8 billion minus $2.5 billion leaves $5.5 billion, and $5.5 billion is about 69% of $8 billion. Put the other way, the reported price is less than a third of the 2022 valuation. Coin Academy rounds the drop to 70%; Cointelegraph calls it a steep discount without a figure. If the 2022 valuation was in fact somewhat above $8 billion, the gap is slightly wider. The comparison has limits. The $8 billion was set in a private round at the peak of the 2021-2022 cycle, when many crypto companies raised money at prices they never saw again. And a reported deal price only becomes a valuation if the deal is real and its structure is known.

Founded in 2018, Fireblocks sells the plumbing that lets banks, exchanges and fintechs hold and move crypto assets. Its technology relies on multi-party computation (MPC): the private key that controls a wallet is never assembled in one place but split into shares held by different parties, which must cooperate to sign a transaction. It is the institutional answer to a problem that individual users meet through self-custody, where the user alone holds the key.

Bitcoin Magazine names BNY Mellon, Worldpay, Revolut and Galaxy among its clients. Fireblocks itself says more than 2,400 institutions use its infrastructure and that it has secured more than $10 trillion in digital-asset transactions, figures it updates over time (some of its newer material gives a higher total). These are the company’s own numbers, not audited ones. The last revenue milestone it announced was annual recurring revenue above $100 million, in 2022. Coindaro found no reliable revenue figure for 2026.

The company has also been buying. In October 2025 it announced the purchase of Dynamic, an Israeli-founded wallet infrastructure company with more than 50 million accounts; the price was not disclosed, and Globes, the Israeli business daily, put it at about $90 million.

Stablecoin payments are the link between Visa and Fireblocks

On 4 September 2025, Fireblocks launched the Fireblocks Network for Payments, a network for stablecoin payments covering more than 100 countries, with more than 40 participants at launch, according to Blockworks; The Block lists Circle, Bridge, Zerohash and Yellow Card among them. Blockworks also reported that Fireblocks processed a record $212 billion in stablecoin volume in July 2025.

Visa has spent 2026 adding stablecoins to its own rails. On 8 September it said its stablecoin settlement had passed an annualised run rate of $20 billion, more than 15 times the level of a year earlier, according to The Block. In August it announced work with Zerohash on stablecoin funding and payouts through Visa Direct, its push-payment service. Last week, Visa Direct took USDC prefunding live with Inyo Global, and on 19 October Mesh and Visa presented a plan for crypto spending straight from wallet balances, with no wallet, country or date named.

All of those moves are partnerships. Owning a custody and settlement layer used by thousands of institutions would be a different step, which is why the Axios report drew attention even unconfirmed.

Mastercard and Zerohash: when “late-stage talks” ended without a sale

The closest precedent involves Visa’s main rival. In October 2025, reports said Mastercard was in late-stage talks to buy Zerohash, a crypto infrastructure company, for $1.5 billion to $2 billion. No deal followed. In January 2026, Zerohash said it was not entertaining an acquisition and would stay independent, according to CoinDesk as reported by PYMNTS: “We are not entertaining an acquisition by Mastercard.” The two companies were then said to be discussing an investment instead.

Mastercard went on to buy another stablecoin firm. It agreed on 17 March 2026 to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, including up to $300 million in contingent payments (so about $1.5 billion upfront), according to The Block, and completed the acquisition on 3 August 2026. BVNK had itself been in talks with Coinbase at about $2 billion, talks that ended in November 2025 at the due diligence stage, with Coinbase saying the two sides had mutually agreed not to go ahead.

Zerohash never sold, and BVNK went to a different buyer than the one first reported.

The table mixes signed and unsigned deals on purpose: only the completed ones give a reliable price. Coinbase’s purchase of Deribit was the largest at $2.9 billion, but Deribit is a derivatives exchange, not a custody or payments provider. Standard Chartered’s agreement to buy all of Zodia Custody, signed the day before the Axios report, shows that custody consolidation is under way, but its price is secret and gives no yardstick for Fireblocks.

What a change of owner would mean for European users

Fireblocks does not hold retail clients’ coins in its own name: it provides technology and custody infrastructure to exchanges and other firms, some of which serve customers in the European Union. Under MiCA, the licensed crypto-asset service provider remains responsible for custody toward its clients, whatever software it runs. A new owner of Fireblocks would not, by itself, change a user’s contract with an exchange.

Supervision of these providers is also being discussed in Brussels. France has asked for ESMA to supervise more crypto firms directly in the MiCA review. No French or Italian company is named in the Visa-Fireblocks report.

What nobody has shown yet

Several questions remain open. The identity and number of Axios’s sources are unknown. Nobody has said whether talks took place and stopped, are still going on, or never reached the stage described. The structure of a possible price is unknown, as is whether Visa has looked at other targets. Visa has filed no 8-K report with the SEC about a deal, and no regulator has been asked to approve anything that the public can see. Any real acquisition of this size would need regulatory and antitrust clearances.

The next signal would be a statement by either company or a filing with the SEC. Until one appears, the talks exist only in a paywalled report that Fireblocks says is “not true at present time”.