Visa to acquire crypto custodian Fireblocks for $2.5B

The significance here is structural rather than speculative: a card network moving from enabling crypto payments to owning the infrastructure institutions rely on to hold digital assets. That puts Visa in direct proximity to custody, a segment traditionally occupied by specialist firms and banks, and could reshape how tokenized asset settlement is routed. Who it affects most is the institutional custody landscape and Visa's payment rivals weighing similar moves. The open question is regulatory scrutiny of a payments giant absorbing a custody provider, and whether other networks respond with comparable acquisitions.