Bullish

The Securities and Exchange Commission has granted temporary, conditional relief allowing Tokenized Securities Venues to trade certain tokenized National Market System stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools, opening a limited path for tokenized U.S. stock trading. The move follows the Senate's failure on September 15 to advance the CLARITY Act, when a procedural vote failed 49-50, short of the 60 votes required. The exemption is deliberately narrow: tokenized shares must carry the same basic rights as the corresponding traditional stock, including dividend and voting rights, and issuers must be given an opportunity to object before an unaffiliated third party begins trading a tokenized version of their shares. Trading will also face limits on symbols and volume, participating venues must meet access, transparency and other investor-protection requirements, and the relief expires five years after publication unless the regulatory framework changes before then. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins described the move as a step toward bringing U.S. capital markets on-chain while the agency evaluates longer-term rules, and Robinhood jumped more than 5% in early trading, while Coinbase, Circle, Bullish and Securitize also gained.

Crypto markets gained on Monday as optimism over a key US crypto bill revived risk appetite across the digital-asset spectrum. The rally came as the odds of the market regulation Clarity Act passing this year climbed from as low as around 14% to near 30% on Polymarket, still a long shot but a sharp repricing of its prospects. Bitcoin, which accounts for around 60% of the market value of all cryptocurrencies, again approached the $80,000 price level, increasing as much as 1.5% to $78,452. Shares of crypto-related companies rallied more, with digital exchange Coinbase Global Inc. jumping as much as 8% and stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group Inc. increasing as much as 6.4%. Senators have promised to kick off procedural votes later this week, and ahead of that Republican senators released a final draft of the bill with changes addressing some of its most contentious points, including giving the Treasury Secretary power to intervene if deposit flight became detrimental to community banks and adding new ethics guard rails that would force the president to divest from virtual assets or place significant holdings in a blind trust. Analysts at Clear Street wrote in a report Monday that they believe the ethics compromise is the most important single change, since it was the primary Democratic sticking point, calling it incrementally positive for Coinbase, Circle and Bullish.

Bullish has committed $100 million in liquidity to a new lending facility that issues stablecoin loans collateralized by GPU hardware, marking a novel type of real-world asset. The loans, provided in USDC at 70-80% loan-to-value ratios, are backed by GPU Warehouse Receipt Tokens minted via USD.AI's CALIBER tokenization system. The underlying stablecoin, USDai, is pegged 1:1 to short-duration U.S. Treasuries via the M0 protocol, creating a structure where the lending is secured by physical assets while the stablecoin remains tied to sovereign debt. Bullish, a NYSE-listed and NYDFS-regulated firm with $30 billion in spot trading volume as of May 2026, is also testing the secondary market for sUSDai, the yield-bearing variant. Following the announcement, Bullish shares rose 3.90% to $24.54. This initiative follows a precedent set in October 2025, when QumulusAI secured a $500 million non-recourse financing facility via USD.AI for up to 70% of its GPU deployments.

Bullish reported second quarter 2026 results with digital asset sales of $32.6 billion, reflecting moderated trading volumes in a softer cryptocurrency market compared to $58.6 billion in the prior year period. Management reported that Bullish is pivoting its strategic focus toward issuer-sponsored tokenization as the bridge between traditional finance and public blockchains. The company confirmed its pending acquisition of Equiniti remains on track for a January 2027 close, having already secured necessary antitrust clearances. Subscription services and other revenue reached a record $62.7 million, while adjusted revenue rose 62% year over year to $92.6 million. The company narrowed its full year 2026 SS&O guidance to between $225 million and $245 million.

Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange Bullish reported a $280 million net loss for the second quarter of 2026, reversing a $108.3 million profit a year earlier, yet its stock jumped 11.7% to $27.50 on Thursday. Adjusted revenue rose 62% year over year to $92.6 million, beating analyst expectations of about $87.9 million, even as digital asset sales fell 44% to $32.6 billion. CFO Dave Bonanno attributed growth to cross-selling across CoinDesk, Consensus, data, indices, liquidity, and the exchange. Bullish went public on Aug. 13, 2025, raising about $1.1 billion at $37 per share, and the stock remains about 26% below that IPO price.

Crypto mergers and acquisitions reached a record $9.66 billion in disclosed value in the first half of 2026, even as the number of announced deals fell 25% to 87. The disclosed value rose 223% from the second half of 2025, yet deal activity dropped to its lowest count since early 2025, according to CryptoRank Research. Only 21 of the 87 announcements disclosed a value, and the four largest deals supplied 76% of the total, with Bullish's agreement to buy transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion accounting for 43% alone. The median disclosed transaction held flat at $100 million against the prior half, indicating the record reflects a shift toward public and regulated buyers that must report deal terms rather than a broad rise in valuations. Infrastructure overtook Decentralized Finance as the largest target category, with DeFi acquisitions falling from 24 to 9.

Bullish announced that an affiliate of Siris has exercised its option to acquire three non-core business lines of Equiniti: EQ Retirement Solutions, EQ Customer Resolutions and Lenvi. The parties expect to negotiate definitive documents for the carve-out in parallel with the closing of Bullish’s previously announced $4.2 billion purchase of Equiniti in January 2027, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Bullish also said its planned acquisition of Equiniti has received necessary competition law clearances from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. The transaction will unite Equiniti, which serves nearly 3,000 blue-chip public companies and 20 million shareholders, with Bullish’s blockchain-native platform and CoinDesk’s media and data capabilities.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Clarity Act is at the '1-yard line', urging Congress to pass the landmark bill before recess, which sent bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies higher on Tuesday. Bitcoin rose 2.08% to $66,559, Ethereum added 1.00% to $1,922, and Dogecoin gained 1.62% to $0.073. Crypto stocks surged, with Cipher Digital up 18.01% to $24.24, Coinbase Global up 11.70% to $179.20, Riot Platforms up 8.64% to $21.62, Robinhood Markets up 8.58% to $107.80, MARA Holdings up 8.10% to $12.62, Circle Internet Group up 7.90% to $70.62, Hut 8 up 7.81% to $108.81, CleanSpark up 7.66% to $15.53, Bullish up 6.83% to $24.24, Figure Technology Solutions up 6.31% to $32.34, Bakkt up 5.22% to $8.26, IREN up 4.71% to $42.10, Gemini Space Station up 4.33% to $4.70, and Strategy up 3.67% to $101.41.

Bullish has received approval from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission to trade tokenized securities, becoming one of the first regulated platforms for issuer-sponsored digital assets. The approval, granted on June 29, supports the company's vision of modernizing capital markets with 24/7 trading and near-instant settlement using blockchain infrastructure. The platform aims to provide greater transparency, streamlined corporate actions, and direct shareholder engagement within a supervised environment. This step is part of Bullish's strategy to build an end-to-end ecosystem for tokenized securities, which will be further strengthened by its upcoming acquisition of transfer agent Equiniti, enabling management of the entire asset lifecycle from issuance to secondary trading.