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- Payward has finalized its purchase of Bitnomial, giving it full control over a US-based derivatives exchange and clearinghouse.
- The deal allows Kraken and NinjaTrader to offer regulated products like spot margin, perpetuals, and options to American users.
- Bitnomial will keep its current structure while expanding its staff to support Payward’s growing business-to-business services.
The landscape of digital asset trading in the United States just shifted significantly. Payward, the financial powerhouse behind the Kraken exchange, has officially closed its acquisition of Bitnomial. This move is not just a simple corporate merger; it is the final piece of a puzzle Payward has been building for years.
Now, through the acquisition of Bitnomial, Payward has been able to get a rare “full stack” of licenses from the CFTC. Other firms operating in this sector have to cobble together various partnerships in order to provide clients with complicated trading solutions. Now Payward can control the whole chain.
The company owns the broker that manages its clients’ finances, the exchange where trades occur, and the clearing facility where trades are settled. The degree of vertical integration in this particular case is not common in the cryptocurrency industry, and it provides Payward with a huge advantage over other competing firms.
Payward’s Strategic Blueprint for Global Expansion
The parties chose to make this deal at a time that clearly signals a global expansion pattern. Payward decided to acquire the licensed futures exchange in the UK in 2019 and introduced similar exchanges in Europe in the previous year, focusing fully on entering the U.S. market.
Doing business this way primarily aims to replace “wild-west” trading with a federally regulated approach. Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, notes that Bitnomial built its technology specifically for the digital asset sector from day one.
Wall Street companies usually adapt old technologies to handle Bitcoin, but creators designed this new technology specifically for digital assets from the start. One of the primary steps for using this technology is to introduce spot margin trading at Kraken, and further innovations will include introducing perpetual futures and options to traders under the supervision of the US regulator.
Business Over Individual Impact
While Kraken exchange users will see some new tools, the business environment will feel the real impact: Bitnomial will function as an independent Payward subsidiary, now backed by significantly more financial muscle.
The new initiative is aimed at helping Payward to operate through its “Payward Services” platform, presenting itself as a back-end service for others. In this way, other financial services such as banks and regular brokers as well as other fintech apps, would be able to integrate themselves into the infrastructure created by Payward in the US.
This way, they would not need many years for licensing but, instead, would be able to provide derivative tokens from cryptocurrencies to their own customers. In effect, Payward has become an essential utility of the future of American finance.
Also Read: Bitcoin Supply Drain Intensifies as Exchange Reserves Hit Record Lows
