Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis announced on Monday that it has acquired fraud detection startup Alteriya. According to Business Insider, the deal came with a $150 million price tag.
Chainalysis, the largest company tracking illicit cryptocurrency flows on behalf of financial institutions and governments, plans to strengthen its fraud prevention capabilities with Altaya, CEO Jonathan Levin told CoinDesk.
Both companies attack a thematically similar problem: bad actors on the blockchain from different vantage points. Chainalies accumulates a large amount of information about your crypto wallets and tracks where your money goes. Altaya, on the other hand, uses data about fraudsters to stop transactions in their tracks.
“Alteliya has collected the most comprehensive information on the financial infrastructure of every fraudster out there,” Levin said. Exchanges connected to the dataset can flag transactions initiated by potential victims and stop crimes before they occur.
Chainalysis already collects a large amount of data on crypto fraudsters, Levin said, and there is significant overlap between the company's blacklist and Alteriya's blacklist. However, the startup has an even bigger list than Chainaloss's. He hopes that by combining the capabilities of both companies, they will be able to sniff out even more fraudsters.
The acquisition continues Chainalysis' acquisition of Israeli-based crypto security startups, following last month's acquisition of Hexagate. All teams will work out of a new, consolidated office in Tel Aviv, Levin said. This could put the company in a good position to further tap into what he calls Israel's “very deep talent market for this kind of work.”
Although Chainalies is best known for its work in the crypto space, it is now focused on fighting broader financial fraud. Alteria's AI-driven fraud model has a “huge opportunity in traditional markets” and the data banks and other financial institutions need to stop fraud, Levin said.
