After completing its purchase of Bitnomial, Payward, the parent company of Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, now has a fully CFTC-regulated U.S. derivatives stack.
Payward now owns the futures broker, exchange, and clearinghouse licenses that Bitnomial had before the acquisition. This setup eliminates the need for Payward to depend on an assortment of third-party venues in the United States to sell regulated crypto derivatives.
Equity held by Payward is valued at $20 billion as a result of the deal. This agreement comes after the company’s 2025 acquisition of retail futures platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion; the two acquisitions combined formed the foundation of the firm’s entry into the U.S. derivatives market.
Payward has stated its intention to begin by using spot margins on NinjaTrader and Kraken. After options, there will likely be perpetual futures and contracts without a specified expiration date.
Banking on Derivatives Market
A business-to-business channel is also made available to Payward via the purchase. The business also said that via a single interface with Payward Services, banks, fintech companies, and brokerages may have access to regulated derivatives products in the US.
Bitnomial has been in operation since 2014, although it took over ten years to get its CFTC licenses. From what we can gather from the briefing, Payward is paying up as much as $550 million for the acquisition.
Deal comes as American crypto companies hurry to bring CFTC-regulated derivatives onshore. Other trading businesses are looking at products similar to perpetual-style futures, which Coinbase has previously released in the US.
With more volume and leverage than spot trading, the cryptocurrency futures and options market has surpassed spot as the most important layer for digital asset trading. Almost twice as much trading volume occurred in cryptocurrency futures as in spot markets in the last 24 hours, totaling over $200 billion.