Billion Dollar Firm Chainalysis adds Bitcoin to Balance Sheet
Chainalysis, a leading blockchain data firm, announced that it is expanding its partnership with NYDIG, a financial services company dedicated to bitcoin, to “execute a purchase of Bitcoin for the firm’s balance sheet.” NYDIG helped enable Chainalysis to buy and custody the bitcoin, and the two have been partners since 2018 for compliance purposes.
NYDIG’s Chief Innovation Officer said of the move: “Chainalysis has long been building trust in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and this investment shows their belief that digital assets are a sound investment for the future. We are happy that they trusted our platform to facilitate and carry out their transaction.”
We are excited to share that we've worked with our longstanding partner @NYDIG_BTC to add #bitcoin to the Chainalysis balance sheet ????https://t.co/OQBmZDmLbI pic.twitter.com/LSX4fIroUI
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) October 19, 2021
The press release did not indicate just how much BTC was added to the balance sheet, only stating that they have acquired “a substantial stake of Bitcoin through NYDIG’s brokerage services.” The firm stated they were guided by “strong confidence in Bitcoin” and leveraged NYDIG’s “expertise in asset management” to make it happen.
Co-Founder of Chainalysis Michael Gronager said: “We are thrilled to be adding Bitcoin to our corporate investment portfolio.” This is their first acquisition of cryptocurrency, and they mentioned they will pursue other digital assets as “potential future investments”. The company is currently valued at $4.2 billion, so the amount they added may have been substantial.
Chainalysis has been labeled “snitches” for working with regulators, and with the mass amounts of on-chain data regarding bitcoin that Chainalysis possesses, it is curious they decided to buy now rather than months ago when Bitcoin was at ~38k. Maybe they know something we don’t, potentially that all the shakeouts for this cycle are done, and we only move up for Q4.
#Bitcoin surveillance company & snitch, Chainalysis has put $BTC on its balance sheet.
— Bitcoin Archive ?????? (@BTC_Archive) October 19, 2021
NYDIG and Chainalysis are indeed both heavily entrenched with regulators and TradFi, and so by adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet, they must realize the asset will have a “bright” regulatory future if you will. As an example, NYDIG has been making deals with banks stating their “ambitions for a broader role at the intersection between banking and bitcoin.”
Some have claimed on Twitter that Chainalysis was “created and owned” by the federal government, so the BTC purchase would be very interesting if that is true. It does appear that is somewhat correct, as Yahoo reported that Chainalysis, as of 2020, was the “go-to firm for 10 federal agencies, departments and bureaus.” The Feds have spent tens of millions of dollars on Chainalysis tools since 2015, according to Yahoo’s reporting.
With all the research Chainalysis has done on Bitcoin, it appears that they are happy to buy some and add it to their balance sheet. Many would call them an enemy of Bitcoin, but they too clearly see the benefit of Bitcoin as a store-of-value and it is almost guaranteed that waves of companies will follow suit.
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Text source: CryptosRus
