The 2020 agreement for Visa to acquire Plaid for $5.3B, announced in January 2020 and blocked by the DOJ in November 2020 on antitrust grounds. DOJ argued Visa was buying Plaid specifically to neutralize a future competitor to its debit network. The deal formally collapsed in January 2021. William Hockey walked away with paper wealth but no liquidity — which is directly why he later used Margin Lending against his Plaid stock to self-fund Column.