Bullish to buy Equiniti for $4.2 billion, aiming to bridge traditional share registries with blockchain markets

Bullish is paying $4.2 billion to acquire Equiniti, a global transfer agent that maintains shareholder records for almost 3,000 public companies and handles roughly $500 billion in annual payments.

The transaction breaks down as $1.85 billion in assumed Equiniti debt and $2.35 billion in Bullish stock priced at $38.48 per share. Closing is targeted for January 2027, pending regulatory approvals. CEO Dan Kramer keeps day-to-day operations. Siris, which bought Equiniti in 2021, gets two board seats.

The deal closes a more specific structural gap that has slowed institutional tokenization: the lack of a scaled, regulated transfer-agent platform with deep public-company relationships inside a crypto-native capital markets group.

Why a transfer agent matters for tokenization

Transfer agents hold the legal record of who owns what shares. They handle dividends, voting rights, and the regulatory paperwork that comes with public-company ownership.

Until a tokenized equity market has one of those built into the chain, every transaction creates a reconciliation gap between the blockchain ledger and the official shareholder register. That gap is why most tokenized securities pilots have stayed pilots.

As Cryptopolitan reported last year, tokenized bonds and treasuries have grown faster than tokenized stocks because the legal recordkeeping for fixed income is simpler.

Equity ownership, with its voting rights and corporate-action complexity, needs the transfer agent.

Bullish CEO Tom Farley said: “Tokenization is a once-in-a-generation shift in how capital markets operate, the defining infrastructure trend of the next 25 years.”

The crypto M&A wave moves vertical

This deal looks different from the wave of crypto acquisitions that came before it. Coinbase bought Deribit ($2.9 billion) for derivatives. Kraken bought NinjaTrader ($1.5 billion) for retail futures. Both were horizontal, exchange acquiring exchange.

Bullish is buying the legal plumbing of traditional equity markets. The pattern extends past Bullish. Securitize and Computershare announced last month they want to bring parts of the $70 trillion US stock market on-chain through tokenized equities.

Two large infrastructure plays in two months suggest crypto M&A has moved from buying competitors to buying the regulated rails of legacy finance.

Numbers that matter

The combined company expects $1.3 billion in adjusted revenue for 2026 and over $500 million in adjusted EBITDA less capex, with annual revenue growth of 6 to 8 percent through 2029. Tokenization and blockchain services within that mix should grow at roughly 20 percent.

Equiniti is registered with the SEC as a transfer agent and regulated by the FCA in the UK, which gives the combined entity dual-jurisdiction credentials before any regulatory approvals on the deal itself.

Bullish posted $94.3 million in adjusted EBITDA on $288.5 million in revenue for 2025. The Equiniti deal would more than triple that revenue base in one transaction.