Kraken to buy derivatives firm Bitnomial in $550M deal

Bitnomial bills itself as the first crypto-native business in the U.S. to hold CFTC-issued licenses required to operate an exchange, a clearinghouse and a brokerage.

Kraken has agreed to buy Bitnomial, a derivatives company, in a deal worth up to $550 million that's expected to close by June, the crypto exchange announced Friday.

"The shape of a market is determined by its clearing infrastructure [and] the U.S. has had no clearing infrastructure built for digital assets," Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in a statement Friday. "Bitnomial spent a decade building ... capabilities that cannot be retrofitted onto legacy systems.

"That is the regulated foundation we are adding ... starting with spot margin, perpetuals, and options for US clients under CFTC regulation," Sethi added.

Bitnomial bills itself as the first crypto-native business in the U.S. to hold all three Commodity Futures Trading Commission-issued licenses required to operate an exchange, a clearinghouse and a brokerage.

"Bitnomial was built on a simple conviction: that the future of derivatives is digital-asset-native, and that the U.S. should lead it, not follow it," the business's founder and CEO, Luke Hoersten, said Friday in a statement. "Joining Payward [Kraken's parent company] means we can now build that future at the scale it deserves."

Kraken has made several acquisitions during the second Trump administration, starting with futures platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion in March 2025. It continued that trend through the summer and fall, buying no-code trading platform Capitalise.ai in August, multi-asset investment platform Breakout in September, derivatives platform Small Exchange in October and tokenized equities firm Backed in December.

More recently, Kraken became the first crypto firm to receive a master account with the Federal Reserve. Sethi confirmed this week the company has filed confidentially for an initial public offering.

The Bitnomial transaction values Payward's equity at $20 million.

The companies tout the acquisition as one that "opens a new channel for partners, including fintechs, banks, brokerages and payment providers to offer regulated U.S. derivatives products to their own end users through a single integration."

Buying Bitnomial adds regulated U.S. derivatives to a stable of capabilities that includes crypto trading, tokenized equities staking and on/off-ramps, Kraken said.

As for the future Hoersten is hinting at, Bitnomial, in the release, said it envisions "crypto-settled products, tokenized assets and eventually the kind of continuous, capital-efficient contracts that have transformed global markets."