Chainalysis Bolsters Fraud Detection Capabilities With Alterya Acquisition

Blockchain data platform Chainalysis acquired Alterya, an artificial intelligence-powered fraud detection solution that works with cryptocurrency exchanges and FinTechs to identify scammers and protect the companies’ end users from authorized fraud.

The acquisition will enable Chainalysis to provide real-time proactive fraud protection for payments and enhanced fraud detection during know your customer (KYC) for exchanges, blockchains and wallet providers, the company said in a Monday (Jan. 13) blog post.

“Alterya detected $10 billion sent to scams in 2024 and worked with their customers to proactively prevent fraud, minimize losses and build customer trust,” Chainalysis co-founder and CEO Jonathan Levin said in the post.

Alterya helps crypto exchanges decrease fraud, reduce scam-related disputes and improve the efficiency of manual operations, according to the post.

When its technology is combined with Chainalysis’ blockchain data platform, both will gain greater effectiveness, the post said.

Alterya’s insights may also be used by government agencies to detect emerging authorized fraud trends and by financial services firms to identify fraud on fiat payment rails, per the post.

“Our acquisition of Alterya represents a significant step forward in our work to provide a holistic risk solution that includes prevention, compliance and remediation,” Levin said in the post. “Their mission to protect humans everywhere from fraud and scams — one of the highest grossing categories of crypto crime annually — is integral to our mission to build trust in blockchains.”

The announcement came about a month after Chainalysis acquired Hexagate, a security provider to companies like Coinbase and Consensys, saying that it was impressed with Hexagate’s suite of services for monitoring, mitigation, forensics and compliance that detected “all known hacks” in the previous two years.

“I have long believed that in order to advance the Chainalysis mission to build trust in blockchains, we would need to expand our business beyond investigations and into prevention,” Levin said Dec. 18.

Chainalysis also said in December that the total value stolen in crypto hacks reached $2.2 billion in 2024, a figure that was higher than the $1.8 billion taken in 2023 but lower than the record $3.7 billion stolen in 2022.