Bullish Posts $280 Million Q2 Net Loss as Shares Surge 14%

Crypto exchange operator Bullish (BLSH) posted a $280 million net loss for the second quarter of 2026. On Thursday, August 13, the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange moved the opposite way, jumping 14% to $28.20, the biggest single-day gain since February 9, when the stock rose 17%.

Bullish went public a year ago with backing from investor Peter Thiel. The stock peaked at $118 before losing as much as 83% of its value amid a broader cooldown in crypto equities. This quarter added a new twist. A loss on paper and a share rally landed on the same day.

Bullish is an institutional crypto exchange led by Tom Farley, a former president of the New York Stock Exchange. His platform now trades on the very exchange he once ran.

The quarter's key numbers

For the three months through June 30, Bullish reported a $280 million net loss. A year earlier, the same period brought a $108.3 million profit. CoinDesk first reported the figures.

Digital asset sales, the platform's trading volume, fell 44% to $32.6 billion. The drop had less to do with clients leaving than with a quiet crypto market: bitcoin traded in a tight range, and daily volatility over the summer sank to its lowest levels since 2019.

Transaction fees traditionally make up the largest share of revenue, but this quarter it was subscriptions and related services (custody, analytics, API access for institutional clients) that kept total revenue from declining.

At the same time, subscription and services revenue hit a record high for the company. Bullish wasn't alone in reporting this week - other public crypto players, including Coinbase, Robinhood, BitGo and Gemini, also released quarterly results.

Where the $244.6 million loss came from

Bullish holds part of its own capital in bitcoin on its balance sheet. That's a common practice for exchanges seeking to back their product with their own reserves. But the accounting treatment cuts both ways.

Since 2025, public companies in the US have had to mark crypto holdings to fair market value each quarter under a new FASB accounting standard. If the coin loses value, the difference hits the income statement immediately, even if the company hasn't sold a single coin. The same mechanism has repeatedly driven sharp profit swings at other public companies holding large bitcoin reserves this year, not just at Bullish.

Bitcoin lost 14% of its value during the quarter. It now trades at roughly half its peak of nearly $125,000 reached last October, and by mid-August it was changing hands around $63,000 to $65,000 after softer US economic data.

That markdown produced the $244.6 million charge, which became the main driver of Bullish's loss. Strip out that single accounting entry, and the company would have closed the quarter in the black.

The adjusted picture looks different

Strip out the bitcoin markdown, and Bullish's financial performance looks different. Adjusted EBITDA more than tripled to $29.5 million.

Adjusted net income came in at $14.3 million. A year earlier, the same metric showed a $6 million loss. Year over year, that's an improvement of more than $20 million.

Adjusted revenue rose 62% to $92.6 million: growth in subscriptions and services offset softer trading activity. That's the second reason the market chose to look past the accounting loss. That growth came almost entirely from non-transaction products rather than trading fees, which means Bullish's business is becoming less dependent on day-to-day swings in trading volumes.

A bet on diversification: the Equiniti deal

Alongside the earnings, Bullish confirmed a quarterly deal that partly explains investor appetite. The company agreed to buy Equiniti, a share registration and transfer agency operator, for $4.2 billion.

Equiniti is a UK company with decades of history. It has managed shareholder registries for large corporations, including London's FTSE-listed firms, for years. That business barely moves with crypto market swings.

For Bullish, buying Equiniti also means access to a large base of corporate clients. Down the road, it could offer them blockchain-based services, from tokenized share record-keeping to stablecoin settlement.

The deal pushes Bullish beyond a pure crypto exchange business into corporate financial services. For a company whose digital asset trading revenue dropped 44%, diversifying income sources looks like a logical move rather than a panicked reaction to a weak quarter.

Bullish by the numbers, Q2 2026

The quarter's key figures are summarized below. The gap between the official and adjusted results is the main key to understanding the market's reaction.

Of the five metrics in the table, only one, digital asset sales volume, declined. The other four rose, which explains why investors read the report as positive despite the loss headline.

What's next for public crypto exchanges

The market's reaction to Bullish's report shows something simple. Investors have learned to separate accounting markdowns from the operating quality of the business.

Other public players went through a similar pattern this summer. BitGo reported revenue growth of 80% to $4.3 billion despite a quarterly net loss. Coinbase and Robinhood both reported lower crypto revenue on softer trading activity, even as their broader businesses kept growing.

The practical takeaway for investors is simple. Before reacting to a headline about a multimillion-dollar loss, check how much of it comes from an asset markdown rather than operations. Bullish is far from the only company where that distinction matters most.

• Companies holding large Bitcoin reserves on their balance sheet will post losses during market downturns, even with a healthy underlying business.
• Diversification through deals like the Equiniti purchase reduces how much financial results depend on trading volumes.
• Companies like Bullish that combine crypto trading with traditional financial services find it easier to smooth out quarterly profit swings.
• Public company status forces quarterly disclosure of these markdowns, while private crypto exchanges can keep them out of view.

For Bullish, the second quarter became a test of investor trust. The market chose to focus on adjusted metrics rather than the accounting loss. If bitcoin's price stabilizes in the coming months, the company's next reporting periods will likely avoid markdowns this sharp. The next quarterly report will show whether the Equiniti deal becomes a lasting revenue stabilizer or remains a one-off experiment.