Bullish (BLSH) Earnings Call Q2 2026: Umsatz steigt um 62 %, Fortschritte bei der Tokenisierung

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Bullish meldete für das zweite Quartal 2026 einen bereinigten Umsatz von 92,6 Mio. US-Dollar, was einem Anstieg von 62 % gegenüber dem Vorjahr entspricht und im Vergleich zum ersten Quartal im Wesentlichen unverändert ist.
• Die Erlöse aus Abonnementservices und sonstigen Dienstleistungen erreichten einen Rekordwert von 62,7 Mio. US-Dollar, während der bereinigte Transaktionsumsatz bei 29,9 Mio. US-Dollar lag.
• Das bereinigte EBITDA belief sich auf 29,5 Mio. US-Dollar, was einer Marge von etwa 32 % entspricht. Das bereinigte Nettoeinkommen betrug insgesamt 14,3 Mio. US-Dollar nach Finanzaufwendungen von 14,5 Mio. US-Dollar.
• Bullish hat den Handel mit seinen tokenisierten Aktien auf dem eigenen regulierten Handelsplatz aufgenommen. Das Management geht davon aus, dass vom Emittenten gesponserte tokenisierte Aktien im Jahr 2027 zur Handelsaktivität beitragen werden, im Jahr 2026 jedoch noch nicht wesentlich.
• Das Unternehmen rechnet damit, die 4,2 Mrd. US-Dollar schwere Übernahme der Equiniti Group im Januar 2027 abzuschließen. Alle kartellrechtlichen Genehmigungen wurden bereits erteilt, während andere regulatorische Zulassungsverfahren voranschreiten.
• Das Management verengte die Prognose für die Erlöse aus Abonnementservices und sonstigen Dienstleistungen für das Gesamtjahr 2026 auf 225 Mio. bis 245 Mio. US-Dollar und die Prognose für die bereinigten Betriebsausgaben auf 225 Mio. bis 230 Mio. US-Dollar.

Wichtige Finanzdaten

Die Ausgaben im zweiten Quartal enthielten einmalige Vergütungskosten von rund 2,5 Mio. US-Dollar im Zusammenhang mit Antrittsprämien, Halteprämien und Umzugskosten. Zudem erhöhten die Kosten für das Consensus-Event die Ausgaben des Quartals. Das Management gab an, dass diese Vergütungskosten durch bereits in Q3 erzielte Effizienzsteigerungen ausgeglichen werden sollten.

Geschäftliche und operative Entwicklung

Tokenisierte Wertpapiere und Equiniti

Bullish vollzog seine ersten Transaktionen mit einem tokenisierten Wertpapier durch die Einführung tokenisierter BLSH-Aktien auf seinem regulierten Handelsplatz. Das Unternehmen entwickelt ein vom Emittenten gesponsertes Modell, bei dem der Token die rechtliche Aktie darstellt und von der Aktienregisterstelle im offiziellen Register des Emittenten eingetragen wird.

Das Management erklärte, dass sich diese Struktur von synthetischen Produkten unterscheidet, die einen Anspruch Dritter auf Aktien darstellen. Bullish geht davon aus, dass beide Modelle nebeneinander bestehen werden, glaubt jedoch, dass institutionelle Anleger und Emittenten größeren Wert auf den Rechtsanspruch, direkte Eigentumsnachweise, programmierbare Kapitalmaßnahmen und atomare Abwicklung legen werden.

Die geplante Übernahme von Equiniti ist von zentraler Bedeutung für diese Strategie. Equiniti führt Eigentümerregister für fast 3.000 Emittenten, darunter etwa die Hälfte des FTSE 100 und 30 % des S&P 500. Das Unternehmen betreut mehr als 20 Millionen Aktionäre, wickelt jährliche Zahlungen von über 0,5 Billionen US-Dollar ab und weist eine Kundenbindungsrate von über 95 % auf.

Bullish plant, seine Tokenisierungsplattform am 27. Oktober an der New Yorker Börse vorzustellen, einschließlich neuer Emittenten- und Blockchain-Partner sowie Demonstrationen der Ausgabe und des Handels tokenisierter Aktien.

Börse und Derivate

Die Spot-Handelsvolumen und der Marktanteil von Bullish gingen im Laufe des Quartals zurück, da Krypto-Kurse und -Volatilität nachließen. Allerdings gewann das Unternehmen weiterhin institutionelle Kunden und Partnerschaften hinzu, darunter SoFi, Berenberg, Bit2Me und BitoPrime. Zudem wählte ein großer globaler Vermögensverwalter Bullish als exklusiven Krypto-Handelsanbieter für sein Asien-Geschäft aus.

Das Management geht nun davon aus, dass Bullish bereits in den nächsten Monaten Zugang zum US-Markt für Perpetual Swaps, befristete Futures und Optionen erhalten könnte – knapp ein Jahr früher als zuvor erwartet. Der potenzielle Weg würde die Nutzung der regulierten Auslandsplattform von Bullish zusammen mit einem zugelassenen Futures Commission Merchant umfassen, vorbehaltlich der erforderlichen Genehmigungen.

Medien, Events und Indizes

Die Seitenaufrufe von CoinDesk stiegen in Q2 um 10 Millionen, was einem Wachstum von 38 % gegenüber dem Vorjahr entspricht. Die Zahl der Unique Visitors stieg um 83 %.

Consensus Miami zog mehr als 16.000 Teilnehmer aus über 100 Ländern an. Bullish gab an, dass mehr als die Hälfte der Sponsoreneinnahmen von Consensus von Kunden stammte, die mehrere Produkte nutzen, was das Cross-Selling im gesamten Unternehmen fördert.

Morgan Stanley wählte einen Benchmark-Index von CoinDesk für seinen Flaggschiff-Bitcoin-ETP, der ein Vermögen von rund 400 Mio. US-Dollar erreicht hatte. Grayscale legte im Juni ebenfalls einen Hyperliquid-ETP unter Verwendung von CoinDesk-Indizes auf, während Morgan Stanley Ende Juli Ethereum- und Solana-ETPs hinzufügte. Das Management gab zu bedenken, dass die Indexerlöse an das Produktvermögen gekoppelt sind und durch die niedrigeren Krypto-Kurse belastet wurden.

Liquidity Services

Die Liquidity Services erwiesen sich trotz niedrigerer Vermögenspreise als widerstandsfähig. Bullish gewann neue Kunden und wurde die erste Börse, die SoFis Stablecoin, SoFi USD, notierte. Laut Management blieben die zugrunde liegenden Erlöse aus Abonnementservices und sonstigen Dienstleistungen ohne Consensus im Vergleich zu Q1 weitgehend stabil.

Prognose des Managements

Das Management rechnet damit, dass sich die Erlöse aus Abonnementservices und sonstigen Dienstleistungen in der zweiten Jahreshälfte innerhalb der Prognosespanne zu etwa 45 % auf Q3 und zu 55 % auf Q4 verteilen werden. Unterzeichnete Partnerschaften, deren Start bevorsteht, sollen voraussichtlich das Wachstum gegenüber dem Vorquartal stützen.

Bullish gibt keine Prognose für den bereinigten Transaktionsumsatz ab. Das Management erklärte, dass für 2026 kein wesentlicher Umsatzanstieg bei den Transaktionen durch tokenisierte Aktien erwartet wird, diese jedoch ab 2027 einen Beitrag leisten dürften.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

• Krypto-Kurse, Volatilität und Handelsvolumen gingen zurück, was die Börsenaktivität und die Indexerlöse unter Druck setzte.
• Der CLARITY Act wurde während der Sitzungsperiode nicht vorangebracht. Das Management erklärte, dass seine Tokenisierungsstrategie nicht von dem Gesetz abhängt, das Fehlen einer solchen Regelung jedoch die weitere institutionelle Adaption traditioneller Krypto-Assets verzögern könnte.
• Zeitpunkt und Inhalt einer potenziellen Ausnahmeregelung der SEC für Innovationen bei tokenisierten Wertpapieren bleiben ungewiss.
• Die Adaption tokenisierter Aktien befindet sich noch in einer frühen Phase. Das Management erwartet Aktivitäten in der zweiten Jahreshälfte 2026, bezeichnete 2027 jedoch als den bedeutenderen Wachstumszeitraum.
• Der Abschluss der Equiniti-Transaktion steht weiterhin unter dem Vorbehalt regulatorischer Genehmigungen und üblicher Vollzugsbedingungen. Die erwarteten Vorteile hängen zudem von einer erfolgreichen Integration ab.
• Bullish rechnet mit einem Zugang zum US-Derivatemarkt nur dann, wenn das erforderliche Genehmigungsverfahren abgeschlossen und die notwendige Struktur eines Futures Commission Merchant aufgebaut wird.

Highlights der Analysten-Fragerunde

Vom Emittenten gesponserte versus synthetische Tokens: Das Management geht davon aus, dass beide Strukturen am Markt bestehen bleiben. Es argumentierte, dass vom Emittenten gesponserte Tokens für Institutionen attraktiver sein sollten, da sie rechtliches Eigentum anstelle einer Risikoposition über eine zwischengeschaltete Kreditkette darstellen.

Ökonomie der Tokenisierung: Bullish baut ein interoperables Modell auf anstatt eines geschlossenen Ökosystems. Zu den potenziellen Einnahmequellen gehören Token-Design, Token-Ausgabe, regulierte Börsennotierungen, Liquiditätsbereitstellung, Dienstleistungen als Aktienregisterstelle, CoinDesk-Sichtbarkeit sowie Tools für die Anlegerkommunikation. Das Management erklärte, dass das Hauptaugenmerk auf dem Erfolg der Emittenten liegt und davon ausgegangen wird, dass Transaktionserlöse folgen werden.

Marktchancen der Tokenisierung: Das Management verwies auf einen weltweiten Wertpapiermarkt von rund 270 Billionen US-Dollar und die Schätzung von Citi, dass tokenisierte Wertpapiere bis 2030 rund 5,5 Billionen US-Dollar erreichen könnten. CEO Thomas Farley bezeichnete diese Schätzung als möglicherweise konservativ, räumte jedoch Unsicherheiten bezüglich des Adaptionstempos und der Frage ein, welche Blockchains Marktanteile gewinnen werden.

Emittenten-Pipeline: Laut Management nehmen die Gespräche mit Emittenten im Anschluss an die Equiniti-Ankündigung zu. Das Interesse erstreckt sich auf den Handel rund um die Uhr (24/7), direkte Beziehungen zu den Aktionären, Treueprämien, Stimmrechtsfunktionen und potenzielle Vorteile für langfristige Anleger.

Entmaterialisierung im Vereinigten Königreich: Weniger als 2 % der Erlöse von Equiniti stehen in direktem Zusammenhang mit Papierurkunden und postalischem Versand. Das Management geht davon aus, dass die Abschaffung von Papieraktien, die derzeit für Ende 2027 geplant ist, nur begrenzte direkte finanzielle Auswirkungen haben wird, und glaubt, dass die Tokenisierung eine ausgleichende Chance bieten könnte.

Kostenausblick: Q2 wurde als das quartalsmäßige Ausgabenhoch des Jahres 2026 bezeichnet. Das Management hat in Q3 bereits weitere Personalreduzierungen und Effizienzmaßnahmen umgesetzt, gab jedoch zu bedenken, dass das Ausgabenniveau der zweiten Jahreshälfte nicht als vollständige Run-Rate für 2027 herangezogen werden sollte, da die Kosten im Zusammenhang mit Consensus in der ersten Jahreshälfte konzentriert sind.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Bullish Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Michael Fedele, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.

Michael Fedele

Good morning and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. I'm Michael Fedele and I'm joined on today's call by our Chief Executive Officer, Tom Farley, Chief Financial Officer, David Bonanno and Director of Corporate Development, Liam Foley.

This call will contain forward-looking statements, including those relating to our expected performance and business opportunities, our proposed acquisition of Equiniti Group, the anticipated benefits and strategic rationale of the transaction, expected timing and closing conditions, and business opportunities following the transaction. These statements are not assurances of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks include, among others, the possibility that the Equiniti transaction may not be completed, failure to obtain required regulatory approvals, the possibility of that anticipated benefits may not be realized and the risks related to the integration of Equiniti's business.

For more details on these and other risks, please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings including our 20-F dated March 9, 2026. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. This call will also include a discussion of non-IFRS financial measures A reconciliation to the most directly comparable IFRS metrics can be found in our earnings press release and presentation, which also contain additional information regarding non-IFRS financial measures and key performance indicators.

I'll now turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas Farley

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. I'm Tom Farley, Chairman and CEO of bullish. A year ago today, Bullish went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Thank you for following us and supporting us as a public company. A year ago today, our old school certificated shares began changing hands. A year later, I'm pleased to share with you that beginning yesterday, Bullish tokenized shares are trading on our own regulated venue for the first time.

This also marks Bullish's first trades of any tokenized security. This is just the beginning. We are building the infrastructure for tokenized securities, and this quarter, we turned that from a blueprint into something real. Our business has remained diversified and resilient against a soft quarter for crypto with prices and volatility down across the market. Our diversified largely recurring revenue base and mission-critical product offerings have helped carry us through. and our pending acquisition of Equiniti will be another step towards further business model resilience.

Regarding Equiniti, we're on track to close in January 2027. We have all of the antitrust clearances secured and other regulatory approvals are advancing. Both companies are already building today for the future combined business. What excites me most is the demand from public companies, layer 1 and layer 2 blockchains and other market participants who want to get started in earnest on issuing tokenized securities. The build of this ecosystem will take time, but the interest and demand are already there. I'm pleased to share that on October 27, we'll be headed to the New York Stock Exchange for a showcase where we'll share a first look at the tokenization platform. We will introduce new issuer and layer 1 partners and demonstrate live tokenized equity issuance and trading.

Tokenization of security sits at the heart of our strategy and is the central theme in the modernization of market structure. Tokenization is the process of turning static traditional financial assets into active programmable blockchain-based assets. In May, we announced our agreement to acquire Equiniti, the second largest transfer agent in the world. Tokenized real-world assets on chain have grown more than 20-fold since around 2024 to roughly $37 billion. Tokenized cash in the form of stable coins is now around $290 billion.

Securities are the largest way still to come, a roughly $270 trillion market, that Citi sees reaching about $5.5 trillion tokenized by 2030. I believe this is quite conservative. Not all tokenization is the same, and that distinction is the basis of our strategy. we are focused on issuer sponsored tokenization, where the company itself chooses to tokenize its actual shares and its transfer agent records the token as the real legal share on the official register. That is very different from a synthetic token, where a third party wraps a claim on a share it holds elsewhere or maybe doesn't even hold it elsewhere at all. and the issuer sees none of the benefits of this tokenization.

When the issuer on the other hand, creates the token, the token is the actual share, true legal title, the issuer can finally see who owns its stock. Corporate actions and voting can be programmed into the instrument and a greater share of the economics can flow back to the issuer, investors gain too. They benefit from smoother collateralization of their holdings around-the-clock trading, instant and atomic settlement, fractional access and access to shareholder rewards and more direct relationship with public company issuers, a facet that issuers are also very excited about.

I'd like to spend a few moments telling you a little more about Equiniti because the stand-alone business deserves to be better known. Equiniti maintains the share registered the legal record of ownership for nearly 3,000 corporate issuers, including roughly half of the FTSE 100 and 30% of the S&P 500. It serves more than 20 million shareholders and moves over $0.5 trillion of payments each year. We believe it is 1 of only 2 players of real scale in its markets with high barriers to entry over 95% client retention rate and relationships that average well over a decade. And Equiniti is far more than a register. It runs 5 connected services as laid out on Page 24 of the slide deck that are at the center of how public companies and their shareholders interact. Each service is mission-critical sticky and recurring. And together, they make Equiniti indispensable to how thousands of public companies operate.

I'll now turn to how the Bullish business performed this quarter, starting with the exchange. On spot, our core market trading volumes moderated with the broader crypto market, but we kept deepening our institutional footprint. One of the largest global wealth managers in the world selected Bullish as the exclusive crypto trading provider for their Asia business, and we began relationships with many new customers, such as SoFi, Berenberg, Bit2Me, BitoPrime and others. We keep winning the institutions that value a regulated venue. On options and derivatives, in a positive development, we now believe we will gain access to the U.S. market for our perps, dated futures and options markets in the next several months, nearly a year earlier than we previously anticipated.

We believe that the United States is by far the largest global market for derivatives and represents a huge opportunity for Bullish to be amongst the first to offer onshore crypto derivatives. While industry volumes have contracted this year as volatility came down, we still believe that the digital assets derivatives markets will grow more quickly than spot volumes in the years to come. In the second quarter, we reduced trading incentives, prepared our U.S. readiness plan and started put in place partnerships with retail broker dealers and also went live with other key market participants such as market access provider paradigm.

While our volumes and market share declined in the second quarter, we are excited about our new strategic positioning and the long-term opportunity. Beyond the exchange, our Media & Events business continues to generate business opportunities throughout the bullish business. Consensus, our flagship conference drew more than 16,000 people from over 100 countries to Miami, where we tokenized our own cap table live on stage, a first for an NYSE-listed company. CoinDesk and Consensus power our whole franchise. We are able to gather the industry together in a way that consistently generates new business opportunities.

Coindesk.com, our media arm, continues to experience strong growth, with page views up by 10 million in Q2 2026, a 38% year-over-year increase. Unique visitors increased 83% against the same period prior year, and our market share continues to consolidate. Our CoinDesk indices continue to power institutional products. In April, Morgan Stanley chose CoinDesk as the benchmark index for their flagship Bitcoin ETP, which has already reached roughly $400 million in assets. We continue to win repeat business with our licensees. For example, Grayscale launched their hyper-liquid ETP with our indices in June and Morgan Stanley launched with the Ethereum and Solana ETPs with us in late July. We're putting wins on the board but index revenue scales with the value of assets in each product. So a softer price environment has held total index revenue back even as we gain share and our mandates add up.

Liquidity Services delivered sticky recurring revenue from our delivery of the listing, liquidity and visibility that every asset needs to come to market and trade well. In Q2, we continued adding great new clients including the first exchange to list SoFi's new stablecon, SoFi USD. Finally, on the topic of regulation and legislation here in the United States, the Clarity Act did not advance this session. While clear market structure legislation would help the entire industry, our strategy does not depend on it. Per reporting by Bloomberg, the SEC is expected to publish a so-called innovation exemption potentially in the weeks ahead, which would provide some rules of the road for tokenized securities. We have advocated for this innovation exemption and would welcome this as great progress. We and issuers are hopeful that this announcement will include provisions that provide control to the issuer of the token issuance process.

If indeed, the SEC does provide a role for the issuer, we believe this will further cement the importance of the issuer sponsored token and provide further validation that our acquisition of Equiniti was the right partnership at the right time. And practically speaking, this innovation exemption will prompt a dialogue among all of our issuer customers about tokenization on an accelerated time line. Thank you again for your support over the last year.

I'll hand it to Dave.

David Bonanno

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. This morning, we published our second quarter 2026 financial results alongside the 6-K filed with the SEC as well as our earnings press release and investor presentation available on our IR website. As a reminder, reconciliations of our non-IFRS metrics are included in today's earnings presentation and 6-K.

Now turning to our second quarter adjusted financial results and KPIs on Page 14 of today's presentation. Total adjusted revenue was $92.6 million, essentially flat with the first quarter and up 62% year-over-year. Subscription services and other revenue reached a record $62.7 million during the second quarter and adjusted transaction revenue came in at $29.9 million. Adjusted operating expenses for the second quarter were $63.1 million, reflecting our previously provided guidance that 2Q would represent our peak level of quarterly adjusted operating expenses in 2026.

Our increased operating expenses were driven by consensus related costs and approximately $2.5 million in onetime compensation expenses tied to our broader business transformation. This investment in our human capital included signing bonuses for incoming senior talent and retention and relocation bonuses for some of our existing leaders. These onetime compensation expenses will be offset in the second half of the year by efficiencies already realized in Q3 as we continue to optimize our spending across the entire cost base. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $29.5 million at an approximately 32% margin. Adjusted net income was $14.3 million after finance expense of $14.5 million.

Turning to our balance sheet. As shown on Page 17, we ended the quarter with net liquid assets of $2.1 billion. Looking forward for the remainder of the year, we've updated Bullish's 2026 full year guidance, as shown on Page 22. We narrowing our previously provided guidance due to increased full year visibility. SS&O revenue is now expected to be between $225 million to $245 million. Based on our current outlook, we expect the second half SS&O revenue implied by our guidance will be split roughly 45% in the third quarter and 55% in the fourth quarter with new partnerships already signed and coming online this quarter, driving that expected sequential growth.

Adjusted operating expenses are expected to be between $225 million to $230 million, roughly equally split between the third and fourth quarter. We continue to expect full year finance expenses of $52 million to $60 million. And as a reminder, we do not guide on adjusted transaction revenue and we encourage everyone to review our monthly trading metrics posted on our IR website. Finally, we are maintaining our full year 2026 financial outlook for Equiniti as well as our medium-term combined outlook, as previously discussed during our May announcement and first quarter earnings calls and as covered on Pages 26 and 27 of today's presentation.

With that, I'll turn it back to Tom for closing remarks.

Thomas Farley

Thanks, Dave. And now we'll open it up for Q&A.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brian Bedell of Deutsche Bank.

Fragen und Antworten

Brian Bedell

Maybe let me just start on the tokenization theme for equities. Tom, maybe if you could just talk about how you see the 2 ecosystems evolving? When I say that, I mean the synthetic versus the actual clearly, your model is based on the actual, but we're seeing early progress certainly on the synthetic side. And I guess the question would be to what extent do you see those 2 forms of trading tokenize so coexisting in the future? Or do you think the share of tokenized versions will move really to the actual your model?

Thomas Farley

Brian, thanks so much. Great question. and it underscores the nature of the questions we're getting on tokenization. I remember just 3 months ago when we announced the deal, the questions were of the flavor, will tokenization ever happen. And they've moved to they've kind of moved to how quickly with tokenization happen and even -- well, when it happens, how much will you win by which is great as we derisk the thesis of the acquisition. To answer your question directly, I've no doubt that both models will survive and maybe even thrive, and it's not dissimilar from the traditional equity markets today. Think the actual share versus an ETF or the actual share versus MDR or even an actual share versus, in some cases, a fund structure or a derivative structure or a structured product.

So too, in tokenized world, will you see multiple different models. So for example, the synthetic model may well be sufficient for a small offshore retail customer who doesn't understand credit risk doesn't care to understand credit risk. It's flipping in and out of a share at midnight time Turkey, an institutional New York, London, Hong Kong-based firm that manages customer money is certainly not going to hold some IOU or derivative that goes through a credit chain that involves, for example, multiple brokers. So I suspect you will see both evolve, the issuers will insist upon it because only the issuer sponsored token is the actual share and only the issuer sponsored token really offers a considerable benefit to the issuer themselves.

Brian Bedell

Yes. That's great perspective. And then just my second follow-up question on the revenue synergies on the trading side that you're seeing evolving and then combined with the comments that you made about the traction with retail broker-dealers and in advancing derivatives crypto trading. To what extent do you see that enhancing your trading volumes coming into the second half? Of course, you don't guide to that to the trading volumes, but just trying to get a sense of the organic component of that in the second half and into '27 potentially.

David Bonanno

Thanks, Brian. We don't expect a major uplift to transaction revenues during 2026 from tokenized equities, but we certainly expect that during 2027, that will be a contributor to our business. As Tom mentioned, we already trade securities today. Bullish stock is streamed live on our own platform. We expect the number of stocks and issuers to come on platform with issuer native tokens to increase throughout the back half of the year. We also believe that the development of additional regulated trading venues kind of throughout the globe that will be trading tokenized stocks will help increase the broader liquidity profile of the asset class, and we do expect in 2027 to see some benefits to our trading activities from tokenized stocks.

Thomas Farley

Yes, and Brian, just to kind of reflect on this moment that we're in, we were on this call a year ago, or a year ago today was our IPO. And if I can kind of frame that moment, Bitcoin was round numbers, $120,000. The market cap of digital assets was round about $4 trillion. Fast forward to today, the price of Bitcoin is round about $60,000. The market cap of crypto is round numbers, $2 trillion. And as you and we both know in this industry because it is still relatively nascent, as price goes, so goes volatility so go trading volumes. And so we don't want to get on this call in mid-August and cheerlead for trading volumes, not having a clear crystal ball in terms of what will happen for prices to prices and volatility throughout the year.

What I will tell you is -- and you saw this in some of the comments in our prepared remarks, but you'll continue to see it in the months and quarters ahead. We're doing everything to grow market share. And we're doing well, and we're winning across the board, meaning if you look at the portfolio of products that we offer, adding new institutional customers adding new partners, adding new regulated venues, as Dave just said, as of yesterday for the very first time, we traded and are now able to trade tokenized securities. So we are there ready to capture the growth when it ultimately comes back to digital assets. but we don't want to overpromise because we don't know exactly what's going to happen.

On the other hand, we do know that tokenized securities trading is going to be a huge wave. Again, it's a $270 trillion market. And so any small slice of that comes on board in the back half of 2026 and certainly 2027, that's an opportunity. Ultimately, I'm not saying immediately, but ultimately, will dwarf the trading opportunity of true crypto assets and that $2 trillion market cap that I referenced at the outset.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Vafi of Canaccord Genuity.

Joseph Vafi

Nice to see all the progress along the evolution here of market structure and the like. I wanted to drill down on potentially being able to open up the U.S. market for options and derivatives potentially a year earlier, if you could kind of double-click on that comment, where that's coming from, obviously, maybe the regulatory environment is favorable. Just a little more color there would be great.

Thomas Farley

Yes. No, I appreciate the question. And I'm kind of a closet derivatives, regulation [indiscernible], so appreciate the nuance here. Spent the formative part of my career managing futures exchanges and clearing houses. And there was kind of a path that was a quite painful path for getting access for certain marketplaces, and it involved the full approval of the full complement of a future trade platform of futures clearinghouse as well as in FCM in order to access the U.S. market. But a new pathway has opened up where if you operate an adult compliant, responsible, overseas platform as we do and have for many years, as you know, we're regulated by the toughest regulators on planet Earth, including the Germans often and the Hong Kongers and New York with a bit like and so on and so forth that you're able to access the U.S. should you get the necessary approvals with an approved FCM, which is the -- that's future parlance for broker-dealer.

So if you have an approved FCM, you can leverage that adult regulated overseas trading platform. And so that was -- perhaps it was a lack of imagination on our part or my part personally. But that new pathway, we believe, has become available. And should we go through the kind of right hoops and steps here over the next couple of months, we believe we'll be able to access in an unfed way, the U.S. markets for derivatives.

Joseph Vafi

That's great. And then kind of I guess, a related note on the regulatory front. If you've got any additional comments on that, I guess, what was the innovators carve-out or something like that relative to tokenized equities and favoring the underlying versus the synthetic and what we might expect there and market reaction and issuer reaction to that kind of rule coming out of out of the SEC, I guess?

Thomas Farley

Sure, yes. And I'll share a few breadcrumbs, but some of our conversations will keep confidential just out of respect for our regulator in D.C. The the CLARITY Act would provide a fair amount of certainty, but at a high level, the certainty that the CLARITY Act was providing was by and large around traditional crypto assets. So in other words, you have coins that fall into a little bit of an ambiguous world that's part commodity, part security, and it gets difficult to figure out, in some cases, should I be working under the auspices of the CFTC or the SEC.

In addition, imagine somebody holds a portfolio with something that's slightly more commodity and something that's slightly more security, are the -- do the rules exist and the laws exist where I can hold them in a single portfolio. So that was the kind of thing that the CLARITY Act was really clearing up along with some CLARITY, sorry to use that we around DFI and what was and wasn't allowed in the DFI world. What it was doing less of was providing a whole lot of certainty around tokenization. And you might view that as a negative I actually view it as a positive. The reason being, you don't really need a ton of certainty around tokenization. When you're -- the market we're going after is the tokenization of the global securities market. You hear Dave and I talk about that all the time. That's the $270 trillion market.

Well, good news, we have 100 years of legislation and regulation underpinning the Global Series market it's actually abundantly clear. Nonetheless, there are some elements of ambiguity. And I applaud the SEC for saying, hey, look, we want there to be perfect clarity here because we're not going to engage in regulation by enforcement. We're not going to catch you with the rearview mirror when it wasn't abundantly clear exactly how you would approach this market. And so the SEC has set out to say, "Hey, we're going to provide this innovation exemption." The intent is to help this market develop with some, I'll call it, safe harbors that may not be the right legal term. And so that people like us, people like the issuers, broker-dealers exchanges, would understand exactly how to go about tokenization. So that's kind of the backdrop of that.

And they're taking their time rolling it out. And there were news reports this week that we could see it as soon as this week. I don't think we will see it this week. This is the kind of thing I'd rather come out and be good and come out and be quick. Now to go to this core issue that you're talking about of issuer sponsored versus on issuer sponsor. I don't know exactly what the Texas is going to say. So this isn't inside information. But I do know there was a great hew and cry from the issuer industry around tokenization as it started to take hold around about 4 or 5 months ago. Look no further than our CFO sitting to our left to see a frustrated public market issuer, where all of a sudden, your stock is so-called stock. It wasn't even your stock, but investors think they're holding your stock because they're holding your token on some platforms you've never heard of. Meanwhile, it's not your stock. It's a derivative or some sort of warehouse receipts that may or may not be backed by your stock.

And when something goes wrong, all of a sudden, you're getting calls from these investors or their intermediaries, blaming you, even though you had nothing to do with it. It makes no sense. The issuers want control of this process. They want to be able to say, "Hey, if we're going to issue this thing, we want it to be our stock not some derivative transaction or a minimum, you can't use our name or you can't call it our stock." You need to do the appropriate disclosures around it. just like the existing rules and legislation say. And I think -- and I'm putting that in quotes because look, I don't know this all with certainty. I think the SEC hears that. And I think the SEC wants to celebrate the role of the issuer.

In other words, and shine the role of the issuer. And just as a dollars and cents matter, that's great for us because that liquidity, we've been having these conversations with issuers, and I'll just tell you like, I'd love to get on this call and tell you every issuer wants to tokenize tomorrow. There are some issuers who don't know what tokenization is. Well, good news, this innovation exemption talking about the role of the issuer in the tokenization process. Guess what that does, it provides a mandate for us to go and talk to every single one of our issuer response, every one of our issuer customers about tokenizing their shares and we think has the possibility of accelerating the time line for us to provide all sorts of tokenization services to this group of issuer customers.

And I want to say one thing, this is for my lawyers as much as anything. I'm saying we, we, we, issuers, issuers, please understand when I say that, I'm talking about a pro forma world where we have successfully closed the Equiniti deal. And as Mike said at the outset, there are, of course, risks. And I just wanted to highlight that comment.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dan Fannon of Jefferies.

Daniel Fannon

Tom, you talked about a lot of momentum in terms of new firms signing up for crypto trading, I think, both -- mainly on the spot side. But can you talk about the backdrop of or I should say the backlog of firms that are -- that you are in conversations with in how to think about the evolution of both spot trading adoption from an institutional perspective as well as derivative trading.

Thomas Farley

Sure. I'll let Dave chime in as well, Dan. Look, I'll say because I'm an optimist, I'll start with the positive. Pipeline is as large as it's ever been, and it continues to include more and more institutional names as time passes and the logos that we're adding are among the most credible that we've ever added in our company's history. And the benefit of adding a credible logo perhaps obvious these are durable companies that don't change their mind about their strategies on a quarterly or semiannual basis. All of that is great. And so I feel really good about consolidated market share and take a step back, Dan, I would argue we are among the very, very top. I won't put a number on it, but among the very, very topic changes when it comes to credibility. We can walk into the German regulator, and we can get approval. We can walk into the New York State regulator, the look at them cost stable and get full pale blessing to operate in their local. You can just look around and you can see there are very few like that. And that's why we win institutions.

We have great liquidity at a low cost. We have a feature-rich platform. We're known for running a reliable platform that's highly compliant and super credible. All of that's great. I'm not going to mince words. Crypto is a lousy environment for trading right now, Dan. And I don't think that the CLARITY Act not passing this session is helpful. And I'd love to be able to tell you oh, it doesn't matter at all. I think around the trading of pure crypto assets. So I think Bitcoin, I'll call that a pure crypto assets, some of these layer 1 blockchains. I was looking forward to the CLARITY Act because I do think there's another wave of institutions that would have rolled in some of the obvious guys, some of you on the call, work for them that still don't hold Bitcoin, let's say, for private wealth clients here in the United States.

So feel really good about the pipeline. We continue to build features and regulatory approvals and build out our jurisdictional footprint all around the world. But -- and I'm responding to how you frame the question. And now I'm kind of pivoting to tell you, I'm even more excited about the trading of tokenized securities on this mousetrap that we built, and it may well turn out to be that, that was the giant growth opportunity that none of us saw coming as opposed to the traditional crypto assets.

Daniel Fannon

That's helpful. And I appreciate the clarity there or -- and then just in the context of SS&O, obviously, took the guidance up. The momentum in that side of the business actually seems quite good. Maybe Dave unpack a little bit of what's happening versus what you thought at the beginning of the year when you initially gave the guidance and kind of where things sit today.

David Bonanno

Yes. Thanks, Dan. To be clear, we've maintained the midpoint of the guide. We've just narrowed it here today. But given the environment we've seen over the last 6, 9, 12 months, where Bitcoin has been down 50%, [indiscernible] down 50% to 75%, interest rates from a year ago down almost 20%. We're extremely pleased with the resiliency of our SS&O line item. Tom touched on it a little bit, and there's a slide in the deck. We continue to use the consensus event as an acquisition channel and also as a cross-sell people to create stickier and stickier revenue. Over half of our consensus sponsorship revenue came from customers with multiple different products. We are beginning to see renewed momentum in our pipeline of SS&O, particularly around tokenization. It's not just because of the Equiniti transaction.

In general, that is becoming the fastest-growing part of crypto marketplace. And it's just a bigger TAM. And so we're excited about this big position of our business and the new developments in the market. And we think the business we've built is perfectly positioned to ride those tailwinds across all of our different line items, but especially in SS&O and Liquidity Services.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Pete Christiansen of Citi.

Peter Christiansen

Question on capturing economics, tokenized equities. So I guess when you think about the issuer sponsored model, the objective the objective here for the shares to trade primarily on bullish? Or do you envision the token, I guess, being interoperable across multiple chains venues with Equiniti serving as the authority registry? And I guess in this open architecture kind of framework, where do you expect bullish to capture the majority of the economics?

Thomas Farley

Yes. Great question. There's really kind of 2 insightful embedded questions in what you're asking, Pete. One is kind of walled garden versus interoperable and the second is around the economic model. So if you don't mind, I'll dissect it in that fashion. Let me just start with walled garden versus interoperable. We are absolutely building our token to be interoperable. In fact, on October 27, we'll give you some more information and in the months and quarters ahead. As I said earlier, we will drop a few breadcrumbs but not revealing the whole strategy. But we're very much engaged with trading venues regulated trading venues, less regulated trading venues, traditional crypto venues, trade firms, about the interoperability of this response or tokens with those platforms, number one.

Number two, I even see that interoperability working with so-called CSDs, central securities depositories in the jurisdictions that we operate. And in the U.S., the most notable is DTCC or NSE, but same thing abroad. One of the models that works well for those central securities depositories is they'll hold the actual share for safekeeping and they'll issue a synthetic token on top of that. Sometimes you may have heard that referred to as an entitlement but it wouldn't surprise me at all to see that model really stay in place in various forms in various locales and they'll just hold the issuer sponsor token as opposed to the old school, less beneficial book entry share.

And in addition, with respect to layer 1 blockchain, I don't think in the early days, you will see a single blockchain gain 90-plus percent market share. I think early days, there's going to be 1,000 flowers in that loom and then there's going to be a consolidation as the market kind of realizes what is the best blockchain or to support the issuer sponsored token. And so that's how we're looking at that as well.

In terms of the economic model, Pete, we -- and I'll let Dave chime in we offer the following services for tokenization. And apologies for giving you an exhaustive list, but I really just want to give you a sense of the areas that we can provide value, and we can charge for that value because customers will appreciate it. Number one, we can sit down with the customer and discuss exactly what they want their token to look like. Number two, we can actually generate that token using our tokenization factory, the kind of thing we've been doing now for the life of our company. And one of the ways we helped this tokenized cash or stablecoin market come to life. Number three, we can list it on our own regulated venue. Number four, we can provide liquidity on our venue or other venues. But those can be regulated venues, they can be D5 venues.

Number five, we can provide visibility for that token via our CoinDesk portfolio of assets like think Consensus or the CoinDesk itself. Number six, we can be a transfer agent as we are today. And today, the transfer agent actually earns a quite low fee on a per customer basis. And this new service is clearly a value-added service. So quick query, what that will look like. And then finally, number seven, we have a set that I'll put it in kind of a group of other but really doesn't deserve to be in the other bucket. We have a meaningful newswire business, Globe Newswire in the combined company. We have investor tools that we provide through notified and Equiniti. And all of these are the sorts of things that a CFO is going to be Thursday for as their stock goes tokenized, they're going to need to understand it, they're going to need to understand who's trading it, why they're trading it. who are the holders, how can they reward those holders.

Some of these consumer goods companies are going to want to reward their holders not just with dividends and greater voting rights perhaps to their loyalty, but maybe even discounts or tickets or award points or frequent flyer miles or what have you. So the number of things that we have in our quiver to provide the tokenization and charge for are many. And therefore, for me to give you kind of an exhaustive answer on the exact economics, it's a bit difficult.

David Bonanno

Yes. And Pete, I think I'd frame it for you this way. Our focus is going to be on the issuer and the success of every issuer customer and delivering great value for money to that customer, be it tokenizing their stock and other services. We do expect the bullish exchange to be a beneficiary of our success and our issuer success. We do expect liquidity services to be a core product for us going forward. But the focus is on the issuers first, and we believe the transaction revenue will follow.

Peter Christiansen

That's really helpful. I do want to ask though about some of the carve-outs from the liquidity deal, particularly in retirement solutions and customer resolutions, those sorts of things. I know those are faster-growing parts of one of these competitor. I'm just curious, does that create a client retention issue by separating those components of the deal?

David Bonanno

No, Pete, those are largely independent businesses from the issuers to the resolution business and the pension business, and they are not related to tokenization and issuer success. Again, that is what we're focused on is issuer success. We're happy to part with those assets. We don't believe they're going to get our growth profile going forward or margin profile, again, distinct from our tokenization and issuer-centric focus as we're happy to not be taking those assets with us.

Thomas Farley

And just to give you an example, Pete, one of those businesses is a business that sets up temporary call centers during a crisis. So going back to my childhood, Gerber baby food it comes out, there's glass in the baby food and all of a sudden, they're getting 1 million calls a day. This company shows up and sets up a call center and deals with that influx of very angry customers. Interesting business. Entirely unrelated to what we're building here. So the short answer is no. I appreciate the thrust of the question. But I want to say, completely unrelated. There may be some tether that I'm forgetting to all hedge and say, almost entirely on at a minimum.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ken Worthington of JPMorgan.

Kenneth Worthington

I know you don't break it out, but maybe you can help us directionally on what happened to Liquidity Services revenue in relative to 1Q. Did it shrink? Did it grow? Was it at unchanged from last quarter? And are there any sort of puts and takes to call out in this quarter?

David Bonanno

Thanks for the question, Ken. We don't give that level of detail, as you'll know. I'd say, in general, Liquidity Services in the second quarter was again resilient. There were definitely headwinds versus the first quarter with overall lower prices in the environment. We had new bookings during the quarter, but not as many as we're experiencing today. And so ex consensus, we're happy with the stability of liquidity services and the SS&O revenue, excluding consensus, during the second quarter, it was broadly in line with the underlying business previously in the first quarter, a couple of different puts and takes, but steady, and we're proud of that resilience that we displayed in the second quarter and what we're going to do in the second half.

Kenneth Worthington

Okay. And maybe bigger picture, David, you and I have talked about this a bunch, but can you talk to what's happening with dematerialization in the U.K. and the potential impact on Equiniti's U.K. profit, if the business moves away from shareholder accounts to more omnibus structures, how does that sort of impact the number and types of services offered by Equiniti, and how does that impact revenue? And just talk about time frame here for dematerialization.

David Bonanno

Yes. Thanks, Ken. Taking a step back, dematerialization -- and this became really clear in the July report from the commission -- the dematerialization task force that was published mid-July this year. It's simply the process for the removal of paper shares in the U.K. market says so on the cover of the report. Furthermore, the report begins and ends with the acknowledgment that tokenization should be developed, not just in parallel, but is likely to come before any of these further steps that had previously been contemplated by the dematerialization task force, such as the so-called step 3, which is the intermediate model. Even in that world, we believe Equiniti is a beneficiary of this process to remove paper shares from the market.

We have a broker dealer. Some of our competitors do not. We believe there will be customers who are going to be up for grabs, and we'll be well positioned to get those customers in the future. The removal of paper shares is currently scheduled for the end of next year. And as we put -- there's a page in the appendices of the deck, only less than 2% of Equiniti revenue is directly related to paper certificates and mail revenue. It's de minimis to their financial profile even more de minimis to the combined financial profile and we believe the convergence of tokenization and dematerialization is a tailwind to Equiniti that will more than offset that less than 2% revenue exposure that we have today.

Thomas Farley

I'm glad you asked this question, Ken. As you would imagine, we diligenced their businesses on both sides of the pond because they really have a nexus of business in the U.S. and excess business in U.K. dematerialization the big piece of legislation in the U.S. is CLARITY Act, a big piece of legislation in the U.K., was this kind of dematerialization piece that you brought up. And the net of our diligence is that it was kind of puts and takes where the transfer agent would have a tail of customers that would have to really hold on to. And on the flip side, it was pushing hard towards broker-dealer activity, and we're the only guys that have a captive broker-dealer and a really well-run broker-dealer. And so we kind of looked at it as, okay, there's puts and takes, probably in that neutral to the business or something of that it'll -- they have since come out and said -- I just want to reiterate what Dave said. Hey, tokenization kind of obviates this whole conversation, and we really should pivot to exactly how tokenization is going to work.

And that's where, as you know, we've repositioned our entire business as of early May of this year. And so now undoubtedly, we see this entire thing as a big opportunity for us. And similar to potentially this innovation exemption accelerating conversations that may have otherwise taken place, let's say, in the back half to a much earlier time frame. So two, does this dematerialization/tokenization conversation in the U.K., accelerate those conversations and give us a mandate and an open door to go in and talk to customers, educate them, work with them, be their consigliere as they move to a tokenized world.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Owen Lau of Clear Street.

Owen Lau

So I hear that you're going to have a tokenization showcase in October, and you may be limited to what you can say. But could you please give us an update on the pipeline of the issuers wanting to tokenize their shares, profile of these companies? What are they excited about the tokenization opportunity? And maybe talk about what you expect to get out from this event in October.

Thomas Farley

Owen, thanks a lot. It's good to hear from you again. The -- if I can just start with some contextual comments we announced the Equiniti acquisition in May. As you would imagine, we are deep in planning the actual integration post-close. We're actually collaborating with the company on various and sundry solutions, including around tokenization. We bought this beautiful old antique home up on a hill in Newport at the corner of Main and Main we knew we would go in and it would have beautiful mill work and old growth number, but it was a fixer upper. And we knew that going in. We just didn't know exactly what we would find when we got in the inside. And what we're finding is that there are a lot of upside. There's a lot of -- to continue the metaphor, there are a lot of rooms that have been renovated. There are great managers and leaders there that I'm learning from every day.

But perhaps the most exciting part of it is the direct relationship with the issuer where they pick up the phone, and it is the quality of the issuer list and relationships that Equiniti have that are even deeper than we expected, and we knew that they had high-quality relationships. So the issuer pipeline in terms of those sort of conversations in the process there is filling up. Still early days. We'll have more opportunities this quarter than we did in Q2 and we'll have more opportunities in Q4. If I reflect on it and kind of have to handicap it, it feels more like, yes, there's going to be activity here in the latter half of 2026.

And then this is a 2027 in earnest growth trajectory in part because the ecosystem needs to develop. For example, the trading solutions for trading of these tokens are nascent. Your Dave say, and I said in my opening remarks, we just started trading tokenized securities literally yesterday. And so we feel great about the pipeline, a little bit less certain about the time line but you'll learn a lot more about that on October 27. With respect to October 27, we want you to have a more holistic perspective of this ecosystem. So it's not just about issuers, although they're important. It's about other partners. So for example, layer one, the layer 2, the blockchains are chopping at the bit to be the blockchains that these issuers choose to tokenize their product.

As I said in my comments, there's $37 billion of tokenized assets. To be clear, that is a rounding error. We have companies that we're talking to about tokenization that would be a multiple of that $37 billion. So you can imagine if you're a layer 1. And also broker dealers who want to make sure they too are part of the solution and they're offering services to their customers. And then finally, you gave a lot for us to answer there. So apologies if this is long-winded, but I wanted to get to everything you asked in your question.

In terms of why the issuers are interested, the answer to that is turning out to be more multi-varied than we expected. I'll give you an example. When we talk to consumer goods companies, they are very eager to have a direct relationship with their customers. And anything we can provide to them through this tokenization process that gives them more of a direct relationship from their customers. They can learn from their customers. They can reward their customers. Like I said in my prepared remarks, the ability to provide, I don't know, frequent flyer miles or hotel points or a discount on a subscription or even just a thank you for their shareholding. That sort of thing is very appealing. And then depending on the company, being able to provide accelerated dividends for longer-term more lore holders or additional voting rights or the 24/7 trading. So it's not a one size fits all, but there's a number of things that we're hearing.

Owen Lau

Got it. That's super helpful. And then my follow-up on a modeling question. Your second quarter at just OpEx seems a little bit higher than expected, but you only raised the low end of your full year OpEx guidance a bit. So the implied second half run expense run rate was much lower. So on a bullish stand-alone basis, it's the second half runway, a good exit way for us to think about going into 2027. Is there any equity-related investments we should be aware of for later this year?

David Bonanno

Thanks, Owen. Appreciate the question. I'll take that one. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the second quarter featured higher expenses than we expect from any other quarter this year. That's in part driven by variable expenses associated with our consensus Miami event as well as the $2.5 million of onetime compensation expenses that I detailed related to our broader business transformation, signing bonuses for new hires, retention and relocation bonuses for certain existing key executives. We maintain a very tight grip on the costs. We've already realized additional synergies and further head count reductions in the third quarter to keep us in line with that guide.

I would not say that the back half of the year is representative of the run rate for '27 because that would be excluding the variable consensus related expenses we have in the first and second quarter. We expect that baseline in the second half of the year, which excludes the consensus related events is roughly good. We'll probably expand over time as we invest in the platform. But we intend to hit our guidance there, and we maintain a tight cost control. And the second quarter, as I mentioned, was definitely a bit anomalous with regard to the wages and compensation expenses with that additional $2.5 million that will not recur and the offset in the back half of the year by those synergies we've already realized.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Ed Engel of Compass Point.

Edward Engel

As you think about competing with some of these synthetic issuers, is there anything you can do to kind of jump start distribution of your issuer sponsored shares? I saw you mentioned the onboarding of market makers like winter meet. So just kind of wondering how you're thinking about solving the cold-start problem relative to the synthetic assets, which kind of already achieved pretty strong distribution pretty quickly.

Thomas Farley

Yes. No, great question. That's why we did the Equiniti acquisition is we have 3,000 issuers that we can go to with product out of the box. At the same time, the issuer is in control. And so this isn't the kind of thing where all 3,000 will start on the same day. But the difference between us and our more durable model and the synthetic model is, once you've created it, it's there forever as long as that company is a public company. It's not the kind of thing that can just turn around and disappear the next day or you put in the hands of an investor and they think they're getting IPO proceeds and they get none, which you probably read about in the press. So we don't think it's a cold start problem. We actually think it will be an accelerated start, but it's not and every single thing happens at once as some of the other models may be which I suspect will prove to be far less durable.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Rayna Kumar of Oppenheimer & Company.

Guru Sidaarth

This is Guru on for Rayna. A lot of questions have already been asked, but if I can maybe switch us in other aspects of the business. Much of the conversation pertaining to CoinDesk, right, over the past few quarters has evolved almost exclusively around some of the nice wins on the indices and data side. And of course, on Consensus events. But if you can narrow in on the CoinDesk Media segment, maybe comment on your outlook for this media portion of your business, excluding events, right? Metrics on Slide 14 highlights on strong growth. You called out 38%. So wondering if this will primarily remain focused on supporting broad ecosystem through visibility, cross-selling, et cetera? Or if it could grow into a meaningful stand-alone piece as well?

David Bonanno

Thanks for the question. Yes, we're happy with the recent success in our viewer counts at CoinDesk. That's certainly true. Those have improved dramatically, thanks to the new leadership from [ JERO ] that we brought into the building late last year. We are currently monetizing per se all those extra eyeballs through banner ads or things of that nature. We want to keep the website premium. It is directed mainly at the benefit of our existing issuers and partners and broadening our reach. We're happy and pleased with that business and the resumed growth that's achieved in views. And we expect it to be a beneficiary of our broader business transformation towards tokenization with large.

Thomas Farley

There are days when the market share of that business is actually a majority of crypto media, a majority. And there are lots and lots of competitors. And so we've carved out this role at the intersection of technology and finance. That's something we're going to be able to grow for years to come. And as Dave said, it's very helpful for us on occasion to be able to use that asset for, say, for example, advertising purposes for other opportunities that we have under the Bullish umbrella.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Frankowitz of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Unknown Analyst

Tom, on your comment that $5 trillion in tokenized equities by 2030 might be a bit conservative. Can you just kind of walk through what factors do you think might most influence whether that number plays out above or below that estimate. And then as a follow-up, do you have any thoughts on how that $5 trillion plus could be distributed between blockchains, such as any or categories in particular or new more permission ones like Canton?

Thomas Farley

Yes, really good question. Citi is on this call. So I'll start by saying the analysis is excellent. I'm just more anecdotal, and I want to say that right up front. I had a conversation on Tuesday with the CEO of a $70 billion company about them tokenizing their stock. So I'm just looking at it and saying, okay, it's $37 billion today. I just had a conversation, a real conversation with a real CEO of a $70 billion company about them tokenizing their stock. It doesn't take a lot of math to math more than $5 trillion, $6 trillion by the year 2030. I actually see a world where it kind of starts slowly, almost a trickle. And then we have a catalytic event, either the wave accelerates or there's a onetime a big IPO only does a tokenized offering.

And then once you have that, all the institutions are holding the tokenized assets, the broker-dealers are holding the tokenized assets and you flip the U.S. or the U.K. equity markets on to public blockchains, perhaps alongside traditional shares for a period of time, could be years, could be a decade. But right there, you've just blown through $5 trillion, $6 trillion in terms of tokenized assets. So I -- admittedly, I'm coming at it more anecdotally than quantitative, almost top down based on these experiences that we're having. But like I said in May, the question was, oh, geez, is tokenization going to happen? And if I'm honest, we have that question too internally, look, good teams fight we spent $4.2 billion for the business.

You think we don't look at the glass half full and the glass half empty, we do. And we ask that question. I can tell you we haven't asked a question in 6 weeks. Like it's out -- the horse is out of the barn. It's just a question of how quickly is it going to happen and to what extent are we going to be a leader. In terms of the public blockchains we're going to be the ultimate winners out of this I don't have a clear crystal ball. I think the most decentralized working on privacy solutions, the least decentralized that have privacy solutions are looking at how can we do a better job of decentralizing. And it's going to be whichever of those blockchains meets the moment and meets those customer needs to ultimately be the big winners. And we're open to that being many. We're open that being several and that's fine with us.

Operator

I would now like to turn the conference back to Tom Farley for closing remarks. Sir?

David Bonanno

Hi, everyone, it's Dave. Tom had to jump to a customer call here. But thank you, everyone, for attending this morning's call. We look forward to staying in touch with all of you on this journey as we build out the future of financial infrastructure. Please reach out to our IR team with any follow-up questions, and we look forward to seeing everyone next quarter.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.