Two US banks invest in company that tracks bitcoin movements

Large investors from the cryptocurrency ecosystem, such as SoftBank and Wells Fargo, were part of the latest round of funding, worth $ 60 million, raised by crypto asset movement tracking and analysis firm Elliptic.

The London, UK-based company posted on its blog that the latest Series C round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital investing for the first time. Others also stand out, such as the SBI Group in Japan.

Elliptic, which detects addresses sanctioned by anti-money laundering laws, although it did not specify the valuation of individual investments, it did emphasize that with the last round of investments they receive SoftBank in Evolution Equity Partners.

Evolution Equity Partners is an international investment firm that seeks partnerships with entrepreneurs, in order to create business software and cybersecurity companies. They are based in New York and Zurich, Switzerland; and its investments are mostly focused on the US and Europe. The segments they typically invest in are information security, software, and business solutions .

“By supporting Elliptic, Evolution and SoftBank join existing investors, including the investment arms of two of the world’s largest banks, Wells Fargo and Santander, and two of Europe’s best technology investors, Octopus and AlbionVC », They say.

Elliptic, meanwhile, is a company that is responsible for tracking the movements of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, with the intention of providing services to fintech institutions, government and legislative groups, as well as organizations; to face money laundering and other financial crimes.

As detailed on their website , they work with regulators and monitor transactions to avoid receiving BTC from a potentially suspicious address . One of them is the Financial Crime Control Network (FinCEN), which responds to the United States (US) Department of the Treasury.

What will they do with that investment?

Elliptic points out that now and with the new round of financing, they plan to accelerate their investigations regarding financial crimes and illegal activities with cryptocurrencies, responding to the needs of the most demanding institutions “as cryptocurrencies grow.”

They highlight that, as a team, they have already grown 50% in 2021, and that with this new investment they will grow “even faster”, estimating that by the end of 2022 they will reach more than 200 workers worldwide .

And, furthermore, they aspire to continue growing the team of customer service experts, which already works in 18 time zones, by remembering that their users operate all over the world and that their revenues come “from all regions”.

Privacy in the crosshairs for a while

Privacy and tracking of cryptocurrency movements has been around for a while. In fact, the peer-to-peer (P2P) platform for the exchange of bitcoin, Localbitcoins, began to monitor all the movements of its users, precisely after reaching an agreement with Elliptic.

We said it in this medium, that it was a measure that came to “increase supervision and minimize transactions that may be related to money laundering (AML), in addition to reinforcing user identification regulations such as Meet your customer (KYC) ‘.

And it is to be remembered that the previous US government publicly requested, in July 2020, information on the tools that allow tracking the movements of funds, focused on privacy or second-layer solutions, such as the Bitcoin Lightning network , such as and how we report it in CriptoNoticias.

Wells Fargo and SoftBank have already interacted with the ecosystem

This is not the first time that these two greats have had some kind of relationship with the emerging market . In the past they have had serious interactions and even one of them implemented its own blockchain .

According to what we reported on CryptoNews, Wells Fargo tested Corda’s private blockchain to speed up international transactions between its branches. To do this, it would implement its own private blockchain called Wells Fargo Digital Cash .

The bank said they would use this mechanism for cross-border payments between international departments of the entity itself, seeking to streamline this process for internal transactions .

And in the case of SoftBank, in July it was news that it was part of a new round of financing and that represented a total of USD 900 million that arrived at FTX, one of the most important exchanges derived from bitcoin and cryptocurrencies , according to what we reported .

Earlier, SoftBank led the investment round (over $ 500 million) in favor of Sorare , the blockchain-based fantasy football game. He also led a round of USD 155 million in favor of the firm Blockdaemon, according to what the Reuters agency reports.