MoonPay Launches Institutional Platform and Acquires Descent

Cryptocurrency payments company MoonPay has launched a new institutional platform and completed a key acquisition, marking a significant expansion from its consumer roots into the infrastructure serving major financial firms. The company has acquired Descent, a startup specializing in cross-chain routing technology, and simultaneously introduced MoonPay Trade, a platform designed to give banks, fintech companies, and other enterprises unified access to digital asset markets.

MoonPay Trade functions as a single application programming interface (API) providing access to tokenized assets, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and stablecoin liquidity across more than 200 blockchain networks. The platform aims to solve a major technical hurdle for institutions by handling the complexity of routing transactions and managing liquidity across a fragmented ecosystem of different blockchains. It integrates the technology from Descent, which uses proprietary algorithms to find the most efficient transaction paths, reducing costs and execution time.

The new platform will serve as the core execution layer for MoonPay Institutional, the company's business unit focused on regulated...