Bullish to Buy Equiniti for $4.25B, Unveiling Game-Changing Tokenized Securities Infrastructure

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Crypto platform Bullish to buy Equiniti for $4.25 billion, building tokenized securities infrastructureFinance

What to know:

  • Crypto platform Bullish to buy Equiniti for $4.25 billion, adding a global transfer agent serving 2,500 companies and 20 million shareholders.
  • Combination creates a blockchain-enabled issuer services platform spanning issuance, registry and trading.
  • The deal positions Bullish to bridge traditional equity infrastructure with tokenized markets.

Bullish is buying Equiniti, a company that handles shareholder records and transfers, for $4.25 billion. This deal will bring traditional financial services onto Bullish’s digital platform, helping the company expand its work with digital versions of traditional investments like stocks and bonds.

This deal provides Bullish, the company that owns CoinDesk, with a license to act as a transfer agent – a necessary role for publicly traded companies. It adds to Bullish’s current services, which include turning assets into digital tokens, trading platforms, and broader market support.

Equiniti keeps track of ownership for over 2,500 companies and their 20 million shareholders, handling around $500 billion in payments each year. Essentially, they are a central source of truth for who owns stock.

Together, these companies plan to create a complete system for managing digital tokens, from their initial design and launch, through legal compliance and record-keeping, all the way to trading on secondary markets. Bullish believes this fills a critical need in the world of blockchain finance: a dedicated service for handling and transferring tokenized assets, similar to a traditional transfer agent.

According to Bullish CEO Tom Farley, tokenization represents a fundamental change in capital markets, and is expected to be the most important infrastructure development for the next quarter-century.

For widespread use by large organizations, we need complete tokenization services, a central record of transactions, and strong partnerships with security issuers. We now offer all of these, which I believe makes us uniquely suited to drive the move towards tokenized securities.

This agreement arrives as established financial companies increasingly explore turning securities into digital tokens. Recently, Securitize, supported by BlackRock, and Computershare announced plans to bring a portion of the $70 trillion U.S. stock market onto the blockchain through these tokenized stocks, effectively bridging traditional financial systems with blockchain technology.

M&A wave

Bullish buying Equiniti is happening as many companies in the crypto world are joining forces to create complete financial services. This push for consolidation aims to build more comprehensive infrastructure for the industry.

Mergers and acquisitions activity increased significantly in 2025, recovering from a slowdown in 2022-2023. Data from Pitchbook shows over 260 deals worth approximately $8.6 billion – about four times the value of the previous year. This growth was fueled by more predictable regulations and increased investment from institutions.

More and more companies are buying other businesses to gain needed skills in areas like secure asset holding, payment processing, digital asset creation, and complex financial instruments. Larger companies are also acquiring smaller ones to expand their reach and ensure they meet regulatory requirements. Recent deals, such as Kraken entering the regulated derivatives market and MoonPay expanding its payment infrastructure, show a move away from risky investments and toward building comprehensive, long-term revenue streams. Experts predict this trend will continue through 2026.

This agreement allows Bullish, a company that went public last year, to bridge the gap between traditional stock markets and blockchain technology. This will enable features like instant updates on who owns a company’s stock, automatic handling of corporate actions, and quicker transaction processing. It will also help increase trading of digital shares, especially for investors outside the United States.

The proposed $4.25 billion acquisition of Equiniti would be one of the biggest deals ever involving cryptocurrency, exceeding Coinbase’s purchase of Deribit for $2.9 billion and Kraken’s $1.5 billion deal for NinjaTrader. This large sum highlights a shift in crypto mergers and acquisitions, moving beyond simple exchange-to-exchange purchases and now focusing on acquiring established, regulated financial systems.

Before acquiring Equiniti, Bullish bought CoinDesk in 2023, expanding into media, data, and index services to complement its existing trading platform. In 2024, they further strengthened their data capabilities by acquiring CCData, a UK-based provider of digital asset data and benchmark solutions.

The Equiniti acquisition is expected to close in early 2027, pending regulatory approvals.

Goldman Sachs provided financial advice to Bullish. Evercore and FT Partners advised Siris Capital, which has been an investor in Equiniti since 2021.

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2026-05-05 13:39