Chainalysis has announced its acquisition of Alterya, following on from the company’s acquisition of Hexagate last month.

These major investments by Chainalysis come at a time when the continued adoption of cryptocurrencies is pushing the need for governments, law enforcement agencies and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to implement robust frameworks to detect crime and protect consumers.

Research and analysis

In 2024, illicit addresses received a whopping US $40.9 billion, a figure that Chainalysis estimates will rise to US $51billion as it continues to refine its analysis.

Alterya already works with top cryptocurrency exchanges and fintech companies including Binance, Coinbase and Block, as well as top financial institutions, to monitor more than US$8B in transactions per month across crypto and fiat rails to protect 100 million end users from the growing threat of authorised fraud.

Last year, the company detected US$10billion sent to scams and worked with their customers to proactively prevent fraud, minimise losses and build customer trust.

The acquisition

With this acquisition, Chainalysis can now provide real-time proactive fraud protection for payments and enhanced fraud detection during KYC for exchanges, blockchains and wallet providers.

Government agencies may also leverage Alterya’s insights for lead generation into pig butchering, scams and other emerging authorised fraud trends.

Chainalysis will continue to build upon Alterya’s collection of fraud identifiers on fiat payment rails to provide insights to financial services firms on the fiat accounts where customers are losing money to fraud, often an early red flag before funds move into crypto.

“Prevention, compliance and remediation”

Jonathan Levin, Cofounder and CEO, Chainalysis said: “Our acquisition of Alterya represents a significant step forward in our work to provide a holistic risk solution that includes prevention, compliance and remediation.

“Their mission to protect humans everywhere from fraud and scams – one of the highest grossing categories of crypto crime annually – is integral to our mission to build trust in blockchains.”

Levin concluded: “We’re thrilled to welcome Alterya to the team and to work on safeguarding billions of people from fraud and delivering safer and faster payments for all.”

“A reliable partner”

Alterya customer Ilan Zimmer, Director of Payment & Operational Risk, Coinbase commented: “Alterya has been a reliable partner in helping Coinbase identify wallet addresses tied to known investment scams.

“This collaboration has enabled us to better protect our customers and safeguard their hard-earned funds from bad actors,” Zimmer added.