Kraken-owner Payward has agreed to acquire Bitnomial in a contract valued at $550 million in cash and stock, providing a firm control of the full US crypto derivatives license as well as deepening the market regulations.
The to sell they value Payward at $20 billion and they are waiting to close in the first half of 2026, subject to conditions and regulatory filings with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Bitnomial It appears to be the first crypto-native platform in the US to secure all three licenses required to use all derivatives: a designated contract market, a derivative clearinghouse, and a futures trader. The approvals allow it to trade, trade, and provide commercial services within a single regulated system.
By acquiring Bitnomial, Payward gets a foundation that will take years to build. The exchange has spent more than a decade creating a platform for digital transactions, including crypto settlement, crypto collateral, and continuous trading. The agreement brings the foundation under the Payward ecosystem, which includes Kraken and its latest NinjaTrader platform.
Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said that improving infrastructure will improve the way markets work, pointing to sustainable trends and side brands as the basis for new products. He said that the US needs to fix the damage caused to the digital economy, which made the Bitnomial platform a target.
Bitnomial founder Luke Hoersten said the company built its exchange and clearinghouse from the ground up for crypto markets. He also talked about things like permanent futures, crypto-settled products, and a unified book of trades across the board, futures, and options like the possibility that legacy systems can’t support without restructuring.
Busy week for the Kraken
The acquisition expands Payward’s push into derivatives, an area that has been central to crypto trading. While Kraken is still a major exchange, it trails its global competitors in spot trading and focuses on creating derivatives and multi-asset capabilities through acquisitions.
The company’s biggest move came in 2025 with $1.5 billion to buy of NinjaTrader, which provided access to the US futures market and access to a large number of retail traders. The Bitnomial convention builds on the method by adding a fixed part of the derivative.
The partnership also promotes Payward Services, the company’s business-to-business division. Through a single API integration, banks, fintech companies, and brokerages will be able to offer US-regulated derivatives along with services such as crypto trading, staking, and tokenized equities.
Payward framed the event as a development play rather than a cultural one, positioning Bitnomial’s regulatory stack as the foundation for building the next phase of the US crypto derivatives market.
Earlier this week, Deutsche Börse found 200 million dollars invested in Kraken to increase the crypto services of organizations, although the exchange revealed a few security-related incidents affecting a small number of accounts. Also this week, the Kraken it has been confirmed the private placement of the IPO where the value fell to $13.3 billion.
