Bullish to acquire Equiniti for $4.25B — one of the largest crypto deals ever!

Crypto platform Bullish has agreed to buy transfer agent and shareholder services firm Equiniti in a $4.25 billion deal, folding a core piece of traditional equity infrastructure into its digital asset stack. Equiniti maintains records for over 2,500 companies and 20 million shareholders, processing roughly $500 billion in annual payments — effectively the system of record for equity ownership at scale.

Combined, the two firms aim to deliver an end-to-end platform covering token design, issuance, compliance, registry and secondary trading. CEO Tom Farley called tokenization "a once-in-a-generation shift" and said the combination uniquely positions Bullish to lead the transition to tokenized securities by delivering end-to-end services, a unified ledger, and issuer relationships at scale.

At $4.25 billion, the deal surpasses Coinbase's $2.9 billion Deribit acquisition and Kraken's $1.5…