Kraken Paid $550M for Bitnomial's Triple CFTC License Stack

Kraken paid up to $550 million for Bitnomial, a derivatives firm, in a deal that closes by June. No per-share price was disclosed — Bitnomial is private.

What does Kraken actually get? Bitnomial bills itself as the first crypto-native business in the U.S. to hold all three CFTC-issued licenses required to operate an exchange, a clearinghouse, and a brokerage. Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi called it “the regulated foundation” for rolling out spot margin, perpetuals, and options to U.S. clients, products the exchange couldn’t legally offer before. Sethi’s framing: these capabilities “cannot be retrofitted onto legacy systems,” and Bitnomial spent a decade building them.

That triple license stack is what makes the price defensible, in Kraken’s view. Since March 2025, the firm has bought NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion, then Capitalise.ai, Breakout, Small Exchange, and Backed. Bitnomial is the sixth deal in over a year, and the one that adds a regulated U.S. derivatives channel for fintechs, banks, brokerages, and payment providers to offer regulated U.S. derivatives products through a single integration.

The deal values Payward’s equity at $20 million. Bitnomial founder Luke Hoersten said joining Kraken’s parent means the firm can now “build that future at the scale it deserves”: crypto-settled products, tokenized assets, and eventually the continuous, capital-efficient contracts that have transformed global markets.

Kraken is the first crypto firm to hold a Federal Reserve master account and filed confidentially for an IPO this week. A June close puts the Bitnomial deal on the books before any public listing starts.

Diana Kowalski