Mastercard in Talks to Acquire Stablecoin Tech Firm Zerohash for Around $2 Billion: Fortune

In brief

The deal would outpace Stripe’s massive $1.1 billion purchase of stablecoin startup Bridge last year.
Stablecoin activity has mushroomed with tokens’ total market cap increasing by about $100 billion year-to-date.
Last month, Morgan Stanley teamed with Zerohash to enable E*Trade customers to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

Credit card giant Mastercard is reportedly in advanced discussions to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm Zerohash for between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to Fortune, which cited five unnamed sources with knowledge of the deal.

The potential acquisition is the second this month that New York-based Mastercard is reportedly pursuing as it looks to expand its presence in the stablecoin space, along with other high-profile financial services firms.

A Mastercard spokesperson told Decrypt that the company does not comment on speculation. Decrypt has also reached out to Zerohash.

Mastercard and Coinbase each held late-stage talks with BVNK about acquiring the stablecoin startup for approximately $2 billion, Fortune also reported in early October.

Either deal would outpace the $1.1 billion that payments processor Stripe paid a year ago to acquire another stablecoin startup, Bridge.

Stablecoin activity has only heated up this year amid a friendlier political and regulatory environment, including the passage of the GENIUS Act, which established a framework for issuing and trading stablecoins, and as traditional finance firms and retailers have grown increasingly interested in them as a way to execute transactions faster and more cheaply.

Market capitalization for stablecoins has reached over $312 billion, a roughly $100 billion increase this year, according to data analytics platform CoinGlass, and the UK bank Standard Chartered has predicted the market value would reach $750 billion by the end of 2026.

In a Myriad prediction market, more than 50% of respondents believe that the stablecoin market value will exceed $360 billion before February. Myriad is a unit of Dastan, the parent company of an editorially independent Decrypt.

“[In] the same way that DATs have infiltrated Wall Street, stables will replace money transfer,” Chris Miglino, co-founder and president of crypto venture capital firm DNA Fund, told Decrypt earlier this month.

Zerohash closed a $104 million series D-2 funding round at a $1 billion valuation in September and has raised a total of $275 million since 2017. Global brokerage Interactive Brokers led the latest funding round, which also included Morgan Stanley and Jump Crypto.

It has provided products and services for Interactive Brokers, Franklin Templeton, Stripe and BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund, among others.

Last month, Zerohash announced a partnership with Morgan Stanley that will enable customers of the TradFi goliath’s E*Trade online platform to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

In a statement shared with Decrypt at the time. of that announcement, Zerohash CEO Edward Woodford said that “Morgan Stanley’s strategic stake in Zerohash underscores the critical role infrastructure plays… in digital finance.”