42亿收购Equiniti，Bullish押注RWA万亿蓝海

Original author: Ma He, Foresight News

On May 5, US-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 $1.85 billion in assumed existing debt of Equiniti and approximately $2.35 billion in Bullish stock consideration. The stock issuance price is based on the Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) of $38.48 per share over the 30 trading days prior to the close on May 4, 2026. The transaction is subject to customary purchase price adjustments.

The transaction is expected to close in January 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Following the announcement, Bullish's stock price briefly rose to a high of $48.93, an increase of over 11%.

Equiniti: The Core "Household Registration Manager" of Traditional Capital Markets

Founded in the late 19th century, Equiniti is a transfer agent and shareholder services provider, primarily offering listed companies core services such as 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, possessing a mature compliance framework and cross-market operational capabilities.

In 2021, Siris Capital acquired Equiniti and merged it with US peer AST to form a scaled global transfer agency platform.

Acquisition Logic Points Directly at the Trillion-Dollar Tokenization Blue Ocean

Upon completion of the acquisition, Bullish will own the trading platform Bullish Exchange, media outlet CoinDesk, and end-to-end tokenization infrastructure services.

Bullish's Q4 2025 financial report disclosed adjusted revenue of $92.5 million, a significant year-over-year increase (compared to $55.2 million in the same period of 2024); adjusted EBITDA reached $44.5 million, significantly improving year-over-year, with a gross margin of 48%. Full-year adjusted revenue was approximately $288.5 million, up about 35% year-over-year. Subscription, service, and other revenue hit $54.6 million in Q4 alone, surging 284% year-over-year, driven by the launch of options trading, growth in institutional client funds, and expansion of tokenization liquidity services. On February 5, its stock price hit a low of $24.79, but following the earnings report, it rose for two consecutive days, briefly touching $32.

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

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

In March this year, Bullish's total trading volume was $60.4 billion, a significant decrease of about 28% from $84.1 billion in February. However, Bullish's March perpetual contract volume reached $4.4 billion, hitting a new high since May 2025, achieving counter-trend growth despite the overall decline in total trading volume.

Within the Crypto ecosystem, RWA is already viewed as the next trillion-dollar track. The bottleneck of traditional transfer agents lies in manual processing, delayed settlement, and high costs, whereas blockchain technology enables instant ownership transfer, fractional ownership, and global 24/7 liquidity.

Bullish's move may represent a crypto-native response to traditional giants like BlackRock and BNY Mellon laying out their RWA strategies, first integrating "regulated transfer agent + crypto exchange + media data" into one 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 how capital markets operate—the most defining infrastructure trend of the next 25 years. Institutional-grade mass 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 implies that Bullish will gradually shift from a model dominated by trading revenue towards high-margin infrastructure services, potentially significantly enhancing its anti-cyclical capabilities.