Bullish
Bullish is a digital asset exchange, launched in November 2021, also a sub-organization of Block.one, a blockchain software company.[1][22] It is a technology company focused on developing financial services for the digital assets sector, and as of August 2025, it is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.[4][23]
Overview
Bullish Global was formed in 2021 as a subsidiary of Block.one, with backing from investors including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Michael Novogratz, Alan Howard, Louis Bacon, Richard Li, Christian Angermayer, and Nomura.[24]
Its cryptocurrency trading platform, Bullish, was launched in November 2021 and was designed to operate on a blockchain to provide the benefits of decentralized finance, like privacy and auditability, along with a central limit order book.[25] The exchange utilizes the EOS.IO protocol and the EOS Public Blockchain to produce a cryptographically validated, provable, and immutable audit trail of all transactions processed on the Bullish platform. Since its launch, the exchange has processed over $1.5 trillion in cumulative trading volume and ranks among the top ten exchanges for Bitcoin and Ether trading volume.[26]
The CEO of Block.one & the Chairman of Bullish, Brendan Blumer, shared a few insights about Bullish being beneficial to its parent company on the website, saying:
The Bullish exchange will leverage blockchain technology and a new market architecture to revolutionize the high-performance trading landscape by transparently automating expensive third-party functions and turning them into yield-generating portfolio management tools to offer institutions and individuals better and safer access to the latest cryptocurrency investment strategies.[3]
Public Listing on NYSE
Bullish initially announced its intent to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through a merger with Far Peak Acquisition Corporation (NYSE: FPAC), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a deal that proposed a valuation of $9 billion.[6] However, the SPAC deal was called off in 2022.[24]
In June 2025, it was reported that Bullish had confidentially filed for a traditional initial public offering (IPO).[27] The company went public on the NYSE in August 2025 under the ticker symbol "BLSH."[28] The IPO raised approximately $990 million by offering 30 million shares priced between $32 and $33 each, targeting a valuation of $4.8 billion. The offering's underwriters were led by JPMorgan, Jefferies, and Citigroup, and firms like BlackRock and Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management indicated interest in purchasing up to $200 million of the shares.[23]
The company is led by CEO Tom Farley, the former President of the New York Stock Exchange, with Block.one's CEO Brendan Blumer serving as Chairman of Bullish.[4][5]
U.S. Expansion and Regulation
On October 1, 2025, Bullish announced the launch of its spot trading services in the United States. This expansion followed the company securing a BitLicense and a Money Transmission License from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).[26][28]
The platform went live in 20 states and territories, including major markets such as New York, California, Florida, Arizona, and Washington, D.C. Other approved states include Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Puerto Rico.[29]
On its first day of U.S. operations, Bullish onboarded institutional clients BitGo and Nonco. The platform offers zero maker fees for institutional accounts and zero trading fees for advanced individual traders in all approved states.[30]
Products
Bullish Hybrid Order Book and Liquidity Pools were designed to provide deep and deterministic liquidity, along with a user-friendly trading experience underpinned by industry-grade security and auditability. July through September 2021, these designed products were put to test under the 'Pilot Program'.[7]
Bullish Order Books
The Bullish Order Book combines the high performance of a central limit order book (CLOB) with liquidity from an automated market maker (AMM). This combined source of liquidity creates a more reliable order book for digital assets. Similar to other centralized exchanges in traditional finance (TradFi) and digital assets, the Bullish Order Book enables customers to place conventional order types, including market orders and limit orders.[21]
Bullish Liquidity Pools
The Head of Product of Bullish, Mark Woods released Bullish’s first upgrade of liquidity pools to Automated Market Making (AMM) technology through the introduction of a range-bound liquidity pool for the BTC/USD trading pair.
Bullish offers two types of Bullish Liquidity Pools for trading asset pairs on the Bullish exchange: standard liquidity pools and range-bound liquidity pools.[8]
Standard Liquidity Pool
Standard liquidity pools generate bids (buy orders) at each price increment below the current market price down to a price of zero and offers (sell orders) at each price increment above the current market price up to a theoretical maximum of infinity. Standard liquidity pools provide capital across all prices, most of the bids-offers generated are outside the daily trading range and the capital required to generate the bids-offers is not useful or efficient.
Range-bound Liquidity Pool
Range-bound liquidity pools provide liquidity within a specified price range. It’s all about market depth for traders and capital efficiency for liquidity pool participants. With range-bound liquidity pools, the same total amount of capital is condensed to generate bids and offers within a specified price range, creating greater order book depth and increased capital efficiency. The release of range-bound liquidity pools to the ETH/USD and ETH/BTC trading pairs on the exchange is to maximize market depth for traders and capital efficiency for liquidity pool participants.
Options Trading
On October 2, 2025, Bullish announced it would launch crypto options trading, starting on October 8, 2025.[31][30] The initial product offering includes Bitcoin (BTC) options that are margined and settled in the USDC stablecoin. The options are European-style with expiration dates ranging from three weeks to three months, and each contract represents one Bitcoin.[32]
The launch is supported by a consortium of fourteen institutional trading partners, including Galaxy Digital, Cumberland, Wintermute, FalconX, Flow Traders, B2C2, and Qube Research & Technologies. The platform plans to expand its options offerings to include Ethereum and other digital assets in the future.[30]
A key feature of the platform is its unified margin system, which allows traders to manage spot, perpetual futures, dated futures, and options positions from a single account with portfolio-level collateralization and risk offsets.[32]
Bullish's Longhorn
Longhorn is an update to Bullish AMM, which puts the power in the hands of customers by allowing for unprecedented customizability in the range of prices, spreads charged, and bids and offers generated on Bullish. Furthermore, for each market, all bids and offers live on the same order book, regardless of price range or spread, meaning deep, unfragmented liquidity. This iteration enables Bullish to offer market-leading depth and reliable liquidity across market conditions, all on a secure, regulated platform.[9]
Automated Market Making Instructions (AMM Instructions) is an advanced feature allowing eligible customers to directly make markets and earn income using idle assets. AMM Instructions scale to billions of dollars and income is continuously generated while the market conditions support it. Each AMM Instruction offers customers the ability to set parameters based on their trading strategy and risk profile. These parameters include:[12]
- A price range for bids and offers
- A minimum bid/offer spread
- Optional dynamic spread adjustments
Partnerships
Bullish Acquiring CoinDesk from DCG
Bullish announced on November 20, 2023, that it has acquired CoinDesk, the integrated media, events, and index platform for the future of finance, from Digital Currency Group (DCG).[10] The all-cash deal was valued in the range of $70 million to $80 million. Bullish plans to invest in CoinDesk’s global expansion and the growth of its media, events, and indexing businesses. Following the acquisition, CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary within the Bullish Group. In February 2024, Bullish announced a restructuring of CoinDesk's leadership, appointing Sara Stratoberdha as the new CEO, while committing to maintaining the publication's journalistic independence.[24]
Bullish x B2C2
On May 2, 2023, Bullish announced that B2C2, the world's largest crypto liquidity provider servicing institutional clients globally, would be trading through Bullish exchange to seamlessly deliver its clients deep liquidity across all market conditions. [13]
Bullish x CoinRoutes
On May 11, 2023, Bullish exchange announced integration with CoinRoutes, one of the industry’s original algorithmic trading platforms, to expand CoinRoutes’ liquidity provision offering to include access to Bullish’s deep and cost-effective liquidity.
Following the integration, CoinRoutes’ clients have direct connectivity and seamless access to the market-leading depth and tight spreads offered on the Bullish exchange through CoinRoutes’ institutional-grade digital asset trading platform. Bullish clients can also leverage the complete range of CoinRoutes’ proprietary trading solutions specifically designed around digital assets market structure.[14]
Bullish's Data Feed on CoinMetrics
On June 20, 2023, Coin Metrics, the leading provider of crypto financial intelligence, announced that it has added data from Bullish exchange to its Market Data Feed. Bullish trades, order books, quotes, and candles are available through the Coin Metrics REST API and WebSocket. Bullish is the 41st exchange feed added to Coin Metrics’ data coverage on behalf of the company’s clients. [15]
Bullish x Fireblocks
On September 6, 2023, Bullish exchange announced a strategic integration with Fireblocks, an enterprise-grade platform to manage digital asset operations and build innovative businesses on the blockchain. This integration unlocked secure digital asset transactions, advancing improved connectivity and user experiences within both the Fireblocks and Bullish ecosystems. Bullish’s integration with the Fireblocks Network enabled Bullish clients to securely connect with the large Fireblocks ecosystem for instant transfers, rebalancing, and payments.[16]
Bullish x XRP
On September 14, 2023, Bullish announced that it would be providing enhanced liquidity to its XRP spot and margin trading markets. The new liquidity offering positioned Bullish as a market-leading institutional trading platform for XRP, offering low-cost execution for XRP spot and margin trading.
By leveraging its proprietary automated market-making (AMM) technology and capital-efficient margin system, Bullish, through its dedicated in-house liquidity provider, delivers XRP liquidity to its customers with industry-leading spreads and execution costs. The enhanced liquidity driven by this initiative unlocked XRP’s value as collateral within the Bullish product suite.[17]
Bullish x Deltix CryptoCortex
On October 19, 2023, Bullish announced that it has integrated with the Deltix CryptoCortex trading platform to bring Bullish’s market-leading order book depth, reliable liquidity, and best execution to more institutional traders.[18]
Bullish x FalconX
On November 2, 2023, Bullish announced that FalconX, the world’s largest institutional digital asset prime broker, was given access to trade on Bullish.
Following the integration, FalconX gained access to a broad and deep pool of liquidity through Bullish’s market-leading depth and near-zero spreads in the largest digital asset trading pairs. FalconX, through this partnership, would be able to optimize trade execution and risk management for its institutional clients across all market conditions.[19]
Bullish x Talos
On November 15, 2023, Bullish announced that it has integrated with Talos, the premier provider of institutional digital asset trading technology, to provide secure, end-to-end connectivity to Bullish’s liquidity and best execution crypto trading.
Following the integration, mutual clients of Bullish and Talos can seamlessly access Bullish’s market-leading order book depth and near-zero spreads in the largest digital asset trading pairs through the Talos trading platform. Bullish clients can leverage the entire suite of Talos's trading and connectivity solutions.[20]
Bullish as Webby Honoree
In the 26th Annual Webby Awards in 2022, bullish.com was named a Webby Honoree in “Websites and Mobile Sites - Best Visual Design - Aesthetic.” Bullish is also a Webby Honoree in the Social category for “Best Use of Video.”
The honor recognizes the “Meet Bullish” video trailer, introducing the exchange’s unique benefits, which was featured in a 2021 Twitter post.[33] Webby winners are chosen by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which was founded in 1998 to help drive the creative, technical, and professional progress of the internet and evolving forms of interactive media.[11]