BLSH once rose by more than 15%!。(MISSING)
Written by: Ma He, Foresight News
On May 5, U.S.-listed crypto asset platform Bullish reached a definitive agreement with private equity firm Siris Capital to acquire Equiniti for a total consideration of $4.2 billion. The transaction consists of assuming $1.85 billion of Equiniti's existing debt and approximately $2.35 billion in Bullish stock consideration. The stock issuance price is calculated based on the 30-trading-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of $38.48 per share as of the close on May 4, 2026, and the transaction is subject to customary purchase price adjustments.
The transaction is expected to close in January 2027, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. Following the announcement, Bullish's share price rose to a high of $48.93 at one point, an increase of more than 11%!。(MISSING)
Equiniti: A Core "Household Registration Management" Service Provider in Traditional Capital Markets
Founded in the late 19th century, Equiniti is a transfer agent and shareholder services provider that mainly offers core services to listed companies, including registered shareholder record management, stock issuance/transfer/cancellation, dividend distribution and reinvestment, shareholder communication, corporate action processing, and tax filing.
Equiniti currently acts as a transfer agent for nearly 3,000 listed companies, serves over 15,000 corporate clients, manages more than 20 million verified shareholders, and processes approximately $500 billion in payments annually.
Equiniti is registered as a transfer agent with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, with a mature compliance framework and cross-market operation capabilities.
In 2021, Siris Capital acquired Equiniti and merged it with U.S. peer AST to form a large-scale global transfer agent platform.
Acquisition Logic Points Directly to the Trillion-Dollar Blue Ocean of Tokenization
Upon completion of the acquisition, Bullish will own the trading platform Bullish Exchange, media outlet CoinDesk, and end-to-end tokenization infrastructure services.
According to the Q4 2025 financial report, Bullish's adjusted revenue reached $92.5 million, a significant year-over-year increase (compared to $55.2 million in the same period of 2024); adjusted EBITDA was $44.5 million, a substantial year-over-year rise, with a gross margin of 48%!。(MISSING) The full-year adjusted revenue was approximately $288.5 million, a year-over-year increase of about 35%!。(MISSING) Subscription, services, and other revenue in Q4 alone reached $54.6 million, a year-over-year surge of 284%!, (MISSING) benefiting from the launch of options trading, growth in institutional client funds, and expansion of tokenized liquidity services. On February 5, its share price hit a low of $24.79, and after the earnings report was released, it rose for two consecutive days and once reached $32.
After the transaction is completed, the combined entity of Bullish and Equiniti is expected to generate approximately $1.3 billion in adjusted total revenue for fiscal year 2026.
From 2027 to 2029, the merged company is expected to achieve a compound annual revenue growth rate of 6%, with tokenization and blockchain services contributing a 20%! of (MISSING) revenue growth rate.
In March this year, Bullish's total trading volume was $60.4 billion, a significant decrease of about 28% compared to February's $84.1 billion!。(MISSING) However, Bullish's perpetual contract trading volume in March reached $4.4 billion, hitting a new high since May 2025, and this was achieved as counter-trend growth amid the decline in total trading volume.
In the crypto ecosystem, RWA has been regarded as the next trillion-dollar track. The bottlenecks of traditional transfer agents lie in manual processing, delayed settlement, and high costs, while blockchain technology can enable instant ownership transfer, fractional ownership, and global 24/7 liquidity.
Bullish's move may be a crypto-world response to the RWA initiatives by traditional giants like BlackRock and BNY Mellon, first integrating the three components—regulated transfer agent, crypto exchange, and media data—to build a closed-loop ecosystem.
Tom Farley, former president of the New York Stock Exchange and CEO of Bullish, emphasized in the announcement: "Tokenization is a generational shift in the way capital markets operate and the most defining infrastructure trend of the next 25 years. Institutional-scale adoption requires three elements: end-to-end tokenization services, a single unified ledger, and scaled blue-chip issuer relationships. This merger delivers all three at once."
This also means that Bullish will gradually shift from a transaction revenue-dominated model to high-margin infrastructure services, and its anti-cyclical capabilities may be significantly enhanced.