Bullish to buy Equiniti for $4.2 billion, expanding into market infrastructure

Bullish moved to buy Equiniti for $4.2 billion, a bet that the future of crypto will be won not only on trading screens but inside the recordkeeping systems that underpin public markets. The transaction gives the digital-asset exchange a regulated transfer agent, a foothold in the shareholder plumbing that links issuers, investors and payments, and it immediately sharpened the case that crypto is trying to move from parallel rails into the core of mainstream finance.

The deal is structured around about $1.85 billion of assumed Equiniti debt and roughly $2.35 billion in Bullish stock. Bullish priced the stock portion at $38.48 a share, based on its 30-day volume-weighted average price as of the close on May 4, 2026. Bullish said the acquisition should close in January 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, and that it includes a call option allowing Siris Capital to acquire non-core Equiniti business lines.

Equiniti gives Bullish access to a business that sits close to the heart of listed markets. Bullish described the company as a system of record for nearly 3,000 issuer clients, supporting 20 million shareholders and processing about $500 billion in annual payments. More broadly, Equiniti serves about 15,000 corporate clients. Siris Capital bought Equiniti in 2021, and the private-equity firm is expected to take board seats in the combined company.

For Bullish, founded by former NYSE president Thomas Farley and backed by Peter Thiel, the logic is bigger than scale. The company said the combined business is expected to generate about $1.3 billion in adjusted total revenue in 2026 and more than $500 million in adjusted EBITDA less capex. It projected 6% to 8% combined revenue growth from 2027 to 2029, including 20% revenue growth from tokenization and blockchain services. Farley has cast tokenization as a once-in-a-generation shift in how capital markets operate, and Bullish said the purchase would help it become the global transfer agent for tokenized securities.

Investors were not ready to fully endorse the strategy. Bullish shares fell about 6% in premarket trading after the announcement, a sign that the market sees both strategic promise and execution risk in stitching a crypto venue to legacy market infrastructure. Bullish went public in 2025 and began trading on the NYSE under the ticker BLSH on August 13, 2025. The acquisition now pushes it further from being just another exchange and toward a more consequential role in the machinery of capital markets, where convergence can look like progress and concentration can look like risk.