Kraken-owner Payward has agreed to acquire Bitnomial in a deal valued at up to $550 million in cash and stock, giving the firm control of a fully licensed U.S. crypto derivatives stack as it expands deeper into regulated markets.
The transaction values Payward at $20 billion and is expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to customary conditions and regulatory filings with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Bitnomial stands out as the first crypto-native platform in the U.S. to secure all three licenses required to operate a full-stack derivatives business: a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organization, and a futures commission merchant. Those approvals allow it to run an exchange, clear trades, and offer brokerage services within a single regulated framework.
By acquiring Bitnomial, Payward gains infrastructure that would take years to build. The exchange spent more than a decade developing a system designed for digital assets, including crypto settlement, crypto collateral, and continuous trading. The deal brings that foundation under Payward’s ecosystem, which includes Kraken and its recently acquired futures platform NinjaTrader.
Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said clearing infrastructure shapes how markets function, pointing to settlement systems and margin models as the core of derivatives innovation. He said the U.S. lacks clearing infrastructure built for digital assets, which made Bitnomial’s platform a strategic target.
Bitnomial founder Luke Hoersten said the company built its exchange and clearinghouse from the ground up for crypto markets. He pointed to features such as perpetual futures, crypto-settled products, and a unified trading book across spot, futures, and options as capabilities that legacy systems cannot support without redesign.
Kraken’s busy week
The acquisition expands Payward’s push into derivatives, a segment that has become central to crypto trading volumes. While Kraken remains a major exchange, it trails some global competitors in spot trading and has focused on building out derivatives and multi-asset capabilities through acquisitions.
The company’s largest move came in 2025 with its $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader, which gave it a foothold in U.S. futures markets and access to a large base of retail traders. The Bitnomial deal builds on that strategy by adding a fully regulated derivatives infrastructure layer.
The deal also strengthens Payward Services, the company’s business-to-business infrastructure arm. Through a single API integration, banks, fintech firms, and brokerages will be able to offer regulated U.S. derivatives alongside services such as crypto trading, staking, and tokenized equities.
Payward framed the transaction as an infrastructure play rather than a traditional acquisition, positioning Bitnomial’s regulatory stack as the foundation for building the next phase of U.S. crypto derivatives markets.
Earlier this week, Deutsche Börse acquired a $200 million stake in Kraken to expand institutional crypto services, even as the exchange disclosed limited insider-related security incidents affecting a small number of accounts. Also this week, Kraken confirmed a confidential IPO filing as its valuation dropped to $13.3 billion.
