Chainalysis acquires Excygent for enhancing detection of cybercrimes

 Chainalysis, the blockchain data platform has acquired Excygent, LLC, a specialized professional services firm that assists government agencies with cybercrime investigations, data processing, and lead generation. Excygent's people and technology will enable Chainalysis to expand its offering to government agencies, growing its Investigations and Special Programs team to support investigations from end to end, from large scale data analytics to lead generation and investigation.

Chainalysis and Excygent have worked hand in hand with government agencies to support the most significant virtual currency investigations in recent history, including 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.

"Cybercrime like ransomware is one of the biggest barriers to building trust in cryptocurrency," said Michael Gronager, Co-founder and CEO, Chainalysis. "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."

Founded in 2018 in Washington, DC by experts in cybercrime, virtual currency tracing, open source analysis, as well as database forensics and tool development, Excygent enables organizations to conduct cyber investigations and perform operational data analytics by augmenting existing capabilities or providing fully-equipped investigative and analysis solutions as a service.

"The Excygent team has been leveraging Chainalysis technology and working alongside their team to tackle some of the most significant investigations into cryptocurrency crime in recent years," said Aaron Bice, Excygent, LLC. "If you're committed to creating a safer ecosystem for cryptocurrency participants, Chainalysis is the team to be on. We are thrilled to join the world's leading blockchain data platform and to continue to grow their services and technology offering to government agencies."

Chainalysis is a strategic partner to government agencies and private sector businesses across the world, providing data, software, and expertise on compliance and sophisticated cryptocurrency crime and money laundering tactics, techniques, and procedures. This is Chainalysis's first acquisition, and follows its $100 million Series E fundraise earlier this year.