The longer you’ve been in the blockchain space, the more you’ve likely realized that traditional finance companies will come in and benefit from the technology as well. It started with patents and investments; now the companies inevitably begin to take a more active role.

Then You Win

JPMorgan released its cryptocurrency. Now, much of the traditional business sector is getting on board in some way or another, with Facebook freaking out legislators with its plans to launch Libra.

Visa and the famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz are backing a company called Anchorage, which is part of the Libra Association. Anchorage takes a different approach to security, requiring multiple employees to sign off on withdrawals.

Some companies like Mastercard initially rebuked the notion of cryptocurrency, but they have since capitulated as well, patenting technologies around the blockchain.

Between Visa, Andreessen Horowitz, and Blockchain Capital, Anchorage raised around $40 million.

Anchorage was founded by people with a background in building big products. Their early adoption of Libra is unsurprising. Reportedly, the company’s co-founders previously worked on projects like Docker and Square.

Anchorage acts as a custodian for larger sums of cryptocurrency and uses a high degree of security. They are not the first in that sector but probably the first with backing from a firm like Visa.

Anchorage: $40 Million From Three Investors

Co-founder Diogo Mónica told TechCrunch:

“Anchorage applies the best of modern security engineering for a more advanced approach: we generate and store private keys in secure hardware so they are never exposed at any point in their life cycle, and we eliminate human operations that expose assets to risk.”

American Express and other credit cards were pioneers in their own right. Giving worthy consumers the freedom to forget their cash at home created a new paradigm for the developed world. Online shopping and later cryptocurrency are logical descendants.

Could it be that Visa and other traditional financial shops have noticed they might be in a very different world before they know it?