Chainalysis has acquired Excygent after collaborating with the firm to support government agencies in investigating several high-profile cyber cases.
Excygent is specialized in assisting government agencies with cybercrime investigations, data processing, and lead generation. Both firms have worked together as they investigated the disruption of two terrorism financing campaigns, the seizure of more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency connected to the darknet market Silk Road, the shutdown of the largest child abuse site, and the Twitter hack that compromised approximately 130 Twitter accounts pertaining to politicians, business leaders, and celebrities.
Michael Gronager, Co-founder and CEO, Chainalysis, said: “Through that work, I’ve seen first hand that the Excygent team brings deep expertise in cryptocurrency and cybercrime investigations. I am thrilled to welcome them to our growing Investigations and Special Programs team, which provides lead generation, blockchain data analysis, and investigative support to government agencies.”
“Cybercrime like ransomware is one of the biggest barriers to building trust in cryptocurrency. The expertise brought by the Excygent team directly aligns with our mission to leverage the transparency of blockchains to weed out bad actors from the ecosystem and ultimately promote more financial freedom with less risk”, he added.
The rise of the cryptocurrency space has brought new attention to how this asset class should be regulated and how to prevent bad actors from abusing it.
Excygent was founded in 2018 in Washington, DC by experts in cybercrime, virtual currency tracing, open source analysis, as well as database forensics and tool development.
Both firms, together as one, will aim to make the space transparent, with the right tools and the right talent. This is Chainalysis’s first acquisition and follows its $100 million Series E fundraise earlier this year.
The $100 million Series E financing was led by Coatue, bringing the firm’s valuation to $4.2 billion. The capital raise will be used to deepen its data advantage by covering more cryptocurrencies and focusing on emerging use cases like DeFi, and launching a Global Intelligence function to more quickly identify warning signs for potential threats and reduce time to response.
Chainalysis also plans to develop collaboration tools in its suite of software solutions so that public and private sector teams can work together from the same data set with a consistent, shared understanding.
