4.2 billion acquisition of Equiniti, Bullish bets on RWA trillion-dollar blue ocean

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Author: Ma He, Foresight News

On May 5th, the U.S. listed crypto asset platform Bullish reached a final agreement with private equity firm Siris Capital to acquire Equiniti for a total consideration of $4.2 billion. The deal consists of approximately $1.85 billion in existing debt of Equiniti and about $2.35 billion in Bullish stock consideration, with the stock issuance price based on a 30-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of $38.48 per share before the close on May 4, 2026. The transaction is subject to customary purchase price adjustments.

The deal is expected to close in January 2027, pending regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. After the announcement, Bullish’s stock price briefly rose to a high of $48.93, an increase of over 11%.

Equiniti: The Core “Registration Management” Service Provider in Traditional Capital Markets

Founded in the late 19th century, Equiniti is a transfer agent and shareholder services provider, mainly offering core services such as registering shareholder records, issuing/transferring/canceling shares, dividend payments and reinvestment, shareholder communication, corporate action processing, and tax reporting for listed companies.

Equiniti currently acts as transfer agent for nearly 3,000 listed companies, serving over 15k corporate clients, managing more than 20 million verified shareholders, and processing 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, possessing a mature compliance framework and cross-market operational capabilities.

In 2021, Siris Capital acquired Equiniti and merged it with its American peer AST, forming a scaled global transfer agency platform.

Acquisition Logic Points to a Trillion-Dollar Tokenization Blue Ocean

After the acquisition, Bullish owns 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 in 2024); adjusted EBITDA was $44.5 million, also a substantial increase, with a gross margin of 48%. The full-year adjusted revenue was approximately $288.5 million, up about 35% year-over-year. Subscription, services, and other revenues in Q4 alone reached $54.6 million, a 284% surge YoY, driven by the launch of options trading, increased institutional client funds, and expansion of tokenization liquidity services. On February 5th, its stock price hit a low of $24.79; after the earnings release, it rose for two consecutive days, briefly reaching $32.

Post-merger, the combined entity of Bullish and Equiniti is expected to generate approximately $1.3 billion in adjusted total revenue in fiscal year 2026.

From 2027 to 2029, the merged company projects a compound annual revenue growth of 6%-8%, with tokenization and blockchain services contributing to 20% of the revenue growth.

In March this year, Bullish’s total trading volume was $60.4 billion, a sharp decline of about 28% from $15k in February. However, in March, Bullish’s perpetual contract trading volume reached $4.4 billion, hitting a new high since May 2025, and this growth was achieved despite the overall decline in total trading volume.

In the crypto ecosystem, RWA (Real-World Assets) are regarded as the next trillion-dollar track. Traditional transfer agents face bottlenecks such as manual processing, settlement delays, and high costs, whereas blockchain technology enables instant ownership transfer, fractional ownership, and 24/7 global liquidity.

Bullish’s move may be a crypto response to traditional giants like BlackRock and BNY Mellon laying out RWA strategies, initially integrating “regulated transfer agency + crypto exchange + media data” into a closed-loop ecosystem.

Tom Farley, former NYSE President and CEO of Bullish, emphasized in the announcement: “Tokenization is a generational shift in how capital markets operate and the most defining infrastructure trend for the next 25 years. Large-scale institutional adoption requires three elements: end-to-end tokenization services, a single unified ledger, and relationships with blue-chip issuers at scale. This merger delivers these three elements in one go.”

This also indicates that Bullish will gradually shift from a transaction revenue-driven model to high-margin infrastructure services, potentially significantly enhancing its cyclical resilience.