Payward, a unified financial infrastructure platform, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Bitnomial, a CFTC-licensed derivatives company in the United States built for digital assets, for up to $550 million payable in cash and stock, in a transaction that values Payward’s equity at $20 billion.
Bitnomial holds all three CFTC-issued licenses required to operate a full-stack domestic crypto trading and derivatives business. The combination unites Bitnomial’s fully CFTC-licensed infrastructure with Payward’s global client base, deep liquidity, and distribution across Kraken, NinjaTrader, and its broader product family.
This acquisition gives Payward access to a regulated foundation that takes years to build. Bitnomial spent more than a decade securing the full set of US derivatives licenses – exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage – becoming the first company in the United States to have assembled this stack with digital assets in mind.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, says the US has no clearing infrastructure built for digital assets and these are operations that cannot be retrofitted on legacy tech. Bitnomial has solved this issue by building a system natively.
“Bitnomial was built on a simple conviction: that the future of derivatives is digital-asset-native, and that the US should lead it, not follow it,” added Luke Hoersten, founder and CEO of Bitnomial.
Hoersten said that by joining Payward they can build and scale at a pace the company deserves.
Through Payward Services, the company’s B2B infrastructure platform, the acquisition also opens a new channel for partners, including fintechs, banks, brokerages, and payment providers, to offer regulated US derivatives products to their own end users through a single integration. Payward Services gives partners access to a broad range of financial infrastructure capabilities through a single set of APIs, including crypto trading, tokenized equities, staking, on/off-ramps, and now regulated US derivatives.
With the acquisition of Bitnomial, Payward now offers a regulated derivatives offering across all of its major markets. The acquisition builds on Payward’s multi-year track record of establishing regulated derivatives presence globally. Payward acquired the first licensed crypto futures platform in the UK in 2019 and launched a regulated EU derivatives offering in 2025.