Bullish (BLSH) has agreed to acquire transfer agent and shareholder services firm Equiniti in a $4.25 billion deal, folding a core piece of traditional market infrastructure into its digital asset platform. The transaction gives Bullish a regulated transfer agent-a required function for public companies-alongside its existing tokenization, trading and market infrastructure capabilities.
Equiniti maintains records for more than 2,500 companies and 20 million shareholders, processing roughly $500 billion in annual payments. Combined, the companies aim to offer an end-to-end platform covering token design, issuance, compliance, registry and secondary trading.
“Tokenization is a once-in-a-generation shift in how capital markets operate, the defining infrastructure trend of the next 25 years,” said Tom Farley, CEO of Bullish.
The deal comes amid a broader wave of consolidation in crypto. After a lull in 2022-2023, M&A rebounded sharply in 2025 with more than 260 deals totaling about $8.6 billion. At $4.25 billion, the Equiniti acquisition ranks among the largest crypto-linked deals ever, surpassing Coinbase's $2.9 billion purchase of Deribit and Kraken's $1.5 billion NinjaTrader deal.
Bullish's last acquisition prior to Equiniti was its 2023 purchase of CoinDesk from Digital Currency Group. The Equiniti acquisition is expected to close in early 2027, pending regulatory approvals. Goldman Sachs served as financial advisor to Bullish.