Kraken parent Payward agrees to acquire Bitnomial for up to $550 million

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has agreed to acquire Bitnomial for up to $550 million in cash and stock, giving the firm a fully CFTC-licensed foothold in the U.S. derivatives market.

The transaction values Payward’s equity at $20 billion and is expected to close in the first half of 2026, a Friday announcement disclosed. The deal is still subject to Commodity Futures Trading Commission approval.

Bitnomial is a Chicago-based crypto-native exchange that holds the three CFTC-issued licenses needed to run a full-stack domestic digital asset derivatives business, including a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organization, and a futures commission merchant.

Bitnomial founder and CEO Luke Hoersten noted that the company had been first in the U.S. on several fronts, including perpetual futures, CFTC-regulated crypto margin collateral, native crypto settlement, and a unified book across spot, futures, options, and perpetuals. It is often the first U.S. entity to list new assets, like the first regulated XRP futures and first physical Solana futures.

This massive licensing stack is the heart of the deal. Buying the firm provides Kraken with regulated infrastructure that took more than a decade to assemble.

Kraken has made several notable acquisitions over the past year as the firm continues its expansion beyond crypto, including the $1.5 billion acquisition of TradFi derivatives platform NinjaTrader and tokenization platform behind xStocks Backed.

B2B and multi-asset push

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, said the company plans to use that foundation to launch U.S. products, including spot margin, perpetuals, and options under CFTC oversight.

Payward tied the acquisition to its broader business-to-business push. Through Payward Services, the firm said banks, brokerages, fintechs, and payment providers will be able to plug into regulated U.S. derivatives products through a single integration, alongside crypto trading, tokenized equities, staking, and on- and off-ramps.

The move also adds another piece to Kraken’s increasingly multi-asset posture. Payward said it already operates regulated derivatives businesses in the UK and Europe after buying a licensed crypto futures platform in Britain in 2019 and launching an EU derivatives offering in 2025. Both Payward and Kraken have spent the past year pushing deeper into tokenized equities, payments infrastructure, and derivatives.

It also arrives days after Deutsche Borse disclosed a $200 million purchase of Payward shares. Deutsche Borse, the German exchange operator, bought a 1.5% fully diluted stake through a secondary market transaction, meaning Payward did not receive new capital from the purchase, a Kraken spokesperson told The Block.

Payward spent much of last year gearing up for a potential public listing.