MoonPay Acquires Israeli MPC Wallet Firm Sodot for $100M in Pivot to Institutional Crypto Security
MoonPay announced Wednesday it has acquired Sodot, the Israeli MPC (multi-party computation) wallet security firm, in a $100 million all-cash deal. The acquisition is MoonPay's biggest M&A to date and signals a clear pivot — from the consumer-facing fiat-to-crypto onramp it has been since 2019, into infrastructure for institutional crypto custody and security.
Sodot's technology is the asset MoonPay is buying. The firm is one of the few non-Fireblocks players running production MPC for enterprise wallets, and its architecture supports Threshold Signatures (TSS) — a more efficient pattern than the multi-sig schemes most exchange custodians still rely on. Banks, hedge funds, and prime brokers have been quiet customers; the acquisition makes that customer relationship MoonPay's.
Why MoonPay specifically wants security infrastructure
MoonPay's onramp business is profitable but commoditized. The economics of fiat-to-crypto conversion have compressed sharply over 2024-2025 as Stripe, Robinhood, and PayPal moved into the same space. The path forward isn't more onramp volume — it's selling adjacent products to the institutions MoonPay already serves on the consumer side.
Custody and security is the most natural adjacency. MoonPay processes hundreds of thousands of transactions per day for over 200 enterprise customers (NFT marketplaces, Web3 wallets, gaming platforms). Those customers have a critical-mass need for non-custodial wallet infrastructure that's compliant, auditable, and integrates with the MoonPay payment stack.
What Sodot brings beyond the technology
The buy is also about engineers. Sodot's team includes several ex-Fireblocks researchers who left in 2023 to ship a more performant MPC implementation. That talent pool is rare — there are maybe 50 production-quality MPC engineers globally — and MoonPay just acquired about 10% of them in one move.
The Israeli regulatory and engineering ecosystem is also a long-term asset. Israel has produced an outsized share of crypto security firms (Fireblocks, Curv, Sodot, GK8) thanks to the IDF Unit 8200 talent pipeline. Having a Tel Aviv research office gives MoonPay a recruiting moat that competitors based in NYC or SF will struggle to match.
Where this leaves Fireblocks
Fireblocks is still the dominant institutional crypto custodian, with $4 trillion in cumulative volume processed and roughly 70% market share among regulated banks running crypto operations. The MoonPay-Sodot deal doesn't directly threaten that, but it does change the competitive map: a payments-and-custody combined offering is something Fireblocks doesn't have, and customers increasingly want.
The likely Fireblocks response is acceleration on its own payments adjacency (the company has been quietly building cross-border settlement features for two years). The institutional crypto-infrastructure market is moving toward a small handful of full-stack vendors rather than specialists.
My Take
MoonPay made the right call here. The consumer onramp business is going to keep getting commoditized — there's no version of that game where MoonPay wins on cost against Stripe or PayPal in the long run. Buying Sodot gives them a security and custody layer they can sell into their existing 200+ enterprise customers, plus a credible recruiting story. The $100M price is steep relative to Sodot's revenue but reasonable relative to the strategic unlock. The interesting next question is whether MoonPay tries to compete with Fireblocks head-on or carves out a "MoonPay-native" slice of the custody market that doesn't directly threaten Fireblocks's regulated-bank customers. I'd bet on the latter — fighting Fireblocks on regulated-bank ground is a losing battle.
FAQ
Is the deal final? Yes — closed and announced Wednesday. No regulatory contingencies disclosed.
How does this affect MoonPay's IPO timeline? Probably accelerates it. Adding a high-margin enterprise infrastructure line makes the financial profile cleaner for public markets.
Will Sodot continue to serve existing customers? Yes — MoonPay said no immediate changes for current Sodot enterprise contracts. Long-term, expect bundling.
The Bottom Line
MoonPay just spent $100M to pivot from "fiat onramp" to "fiat onramp plus institutional crypto infrastructure." The move repositions the company against Fireblocks rather than against Stripe — a strategically smarter battle.