A：Bullish fully launched its Options franchise with encouraging early results, launched its US exchange business, and onboarded many new liquidity services customers, including high-profile crypto projects. It also experienced growth in its media business, ranking as the top crypto news site globally by views.

A：Bullish views tokenization as the most transformational crypto value proposition of the next decade, and it is positioned to be leaders in this space through its liquidity services platform. The process involves turning traditional financial assets into crypto assets and is expected to continue scaling as more asset classes are tokenized on-chain in the future.

A：Stablecoins represent the tokenization of the US dollar and other traditional assets, and Bullish plays a significant role in the ecosystem by providing services such as smart contract bridging, liquidity, and market visibility for these tokens. Bullish's Liquidity Services platform has become its fastest-growing business, with direct mint-burn capabilities and advanced API orchestration tools.

A：Bullish's Liquidity Services platform is performing well, adding new and diversified customers and expanding its blockchain relationships. The momentum has continued into the third quarter, with a record number of liquidity services partners added. Plans for future growth include expanding into new asset classes, developing asset-specific capabilities, and seeking regulatory approval as a transfer agent for US securities.

A：Bullish is expanding internationally by adding large retail brokerages in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America and integrating crypto-focused hedge funds and asset managers. In the US, Bullish has onboarded new customers, including retail brokers and institutional clients, and has a liquid global order book that helped in launching without any cold start liquidity problems. Bullish is encouraged by its early progress in the US and looks forward to seizing market share.

A：Bullish's information services have seen a successful partnership with newly launched exchange-traded crypto products and global ETPs, winning six new benchmark switches and having two active ETP filings. The media business has also grown, capturing more market share against competitors with accessible and high-quality research and analysis provided by Coinbase Research, which also serves as a upsell to Liquidity Services clients.

A：Bullish has continued to win and execute on the vision laid out by Dave and Tom upon joining the company. They are proud of their success to date and believe that they are just getting started due to the early stages of tokenization of securities and real-world assets, the shift of financial market infrastructure, and the company's strong position with the right mix of licenses, technology, talent, and experience.

A：For the third quarter, Bullish reported total adjusted revenue of 76.5 million, up 34% sequentially and 72% year over year, exceeding the high end of their guidance. Liquidity services and all-branded products reached $49.8 billion, up over 50% from the second quarter and over 300% from the prior year's quarter. Adjusted operating expenses were $47.9 million, down 2% from the second quarter, and adjusted EBITDA was $28.6 million, up 253% sequentially and 271% year over year. Adjusted net income was $13.8 million.

A：Bullish has seen growth in the number of stablecoin customers and is not just focused on stablecoins but also layer 1 blockchains and crypto project issuers. They have partnered with most stablecoins except for USDT and see opportunities to monetize stablecoins and non-stablecoins through various revenue-generating activities. The competitive landscape involves partnerships with high-quality crypto platforms and a focus on institutional customers with a minimum market cap of at least half a billion dollars.

A：Bullish continues to add stablecoin customers and sees a need for its liquidity services among stablecoin issuers, layer 1 blockchains, and crypto project issuers. They are seeing more of a blend among their client base. With the recent regulatory changes like the Genius Act, there is potential for growth in stablecoin issuers. The company is focusing on high-quality crypto platforms that target institutional clients and is excited about both stable and non-stable coin opportunities.

A：Bullish is seeking transfer agent capabilities and licensing to potentially offer services related to coin indices and bespoke products. This would enable the company to cater to a broader set of institutional clients and add value through expertise in the tokenization of assets.

A：Bullish has performed well during recent heightened volatility, with the spread on their AM product looking pretty healthy. In addition to this, the company is considering other operating metrics that may be useful to assess performance during such periods, though specifics were not provided in the transcript.

A：The strategy for the crypto news site involves owning premier properties in crypto for visibility, helping important institutional people and companies gather at key events, and using API orchestration, direct mint earn, and writing smart contracts to facilitate bridging from layer 1 to layer 1.

A：The company plans to assist customers by being helpful in the tokenization process, offering a range of services including API orchestration, direct mint earn, and the writing of smart contracts for bridging from layer 1 to layer 1.

A：The speaker believes that tokenization is huge and that there has been a significant shift in perception, with major banks preparing for the wave of tokenization. The benefits of tokenization, such as using tokens as collateral, are now widely recognized.

A：During the flash crash on October 10, the speaker's company was proud of its performance and technology resilience, which preserved more liquidity on its order books compared to other venues, resulting in fewer price wicks and liquidations.

A：A prominent executive from a trading firm was appalled by the 'heads I win, tails you lose' approach of unregulated perpetual futures markets and decided that the speaker's company would not emulate those practices.

A：The guidance for the fourth quarter is flat to modest growth, which the company attributes to seasonality, the absence of events revenue, and a timing element due to the signing of new contracts towards the end of the quarter.

A：The company remains very confident in the growth outlook for subscription services and other revenue. They see tokenization as a potential large tailwind, supported by broad-based growth across all line items and new customer wins.

A：Onboarding new customers has proven to be challenging, with a robust diligence process similar to that of FTX to avoid any risks. However, early wins have been made, the pipeline is quickly filling up with notable names, and there are positive surprises with the number of big customers already onboard.

A：The speaker is very optimistic that the crypto bill will pass due to bipartisan support. They believe that its passage will be beneficial for the PTO industry by eliminating the need to obtain specific state-by-state approvals for operating in the crypto business, which will be a boost for infrastructure providers and help attract more institutions and tokenization participants.

A：The U.S. business momentum has been faster than expected, which the speaker attributes to faithful decisions made over the last couple of years. One significant decision was to seek the toughest regulatory approvals globally for spot crypto trading. This involved not just obtaining licenses but also asserting the ability to operate a single global order book, which required extensive engagement with regulators and took significantly longer than a 'short-cut' approach taken by other exchanges. Despite the delay, this strategy has led to quicker business entry and significant trading volume growth once licensed.

A：The speaker's company made the decision to obtain the toughest regulatory approvals for spot crypto trading as an exchange to ensure a robust and trustworthy platform. They aimed to meet regulatory standards not only in the United States but also internationally, including Hong Kong, Germany, and the United Kingdom. This decision, although challenging and time-consuming, has allowed their company to offer a unique service with a global order book, which has positively affected their trading volume and customer onboarding speed.

A：The increased trading volume is attributed to a combination of factors including more customers, price volatility, and internal pricing changes. The speaker notes that they are achieving higher trading revenues per unit of volatility. Additionally, the U.S. is becoming a major contributor to growth, with the launch of options being a significant factor in transaction revenues. Cross sales, liquidity services, trading in various stablecoins, and a focus on institutional客户需求 are driving the momentum. The early success of options is revealing a strong market need for an options exchange that allows for trading across different financial instruments on a compliant platform, suggesting further growth.

A：The speaker notes that incremental margins are higher on the trading side than on the SSO (Subscription, Support, and Other) side. They mention that third-quarter incremental margins were above 100% due to increased advertising spend in the second quarter for an event. Looking forward, they expect to demonstrate operating leverage, with transaction revenues contributing to higher margins. They also project a volatile environment in 2026, which could continue to drive higher margins and earnings.

A：The potential benefits of options in terms of capital efficiencies and cost margining include the ability to offer greater cost margining capabilities. By having a single global order book and matching engine, customers can place all their derivatives and spot transactions in a single account, which allows for smart and sensible margining. Portfolio margining is offered, which provides a reasonable margin based on the customer's holdings, which is beneficial for the options trading community.

A：Portfolio margining is significant for options trading as it allows for the offset of margins based on the correlation between a customer's holdings. This means that if a customer owns a highly correlated crypto asset and has sold short another highly correlated crypto asset, some margin offset can be provided, leading to more efficient use of capital.

A：The company has implemented a complex system involving a new Var based margining system and a single matching engine for multiple asset classes, which has contributed to the early success and will become more efficient over time. This allows for a more efficient aggregation of trades and positions into a single global account, providing cross-liquidity services and exchange collateral opportunities. The passage of the market infrastructure bill could also lead to new opportunities arising from tokenization.

A：The company does not provide specific guidance on future transaction revenues but continues to see progress in the line item. They expect 2026 to be a better year than 2025, which was better than 2024, and invite investors to watch the monthly metrics for updates on all transaction revenue line items.

A：The factors that contributed to the change in spot spreads in Q2 include the company's pricing structure iteration and a low-volatility environment. Spreads rebounded strongly from the lows seen in May and June. The company plans to continue optimizing for total adjusted transaction revenue per unit volatility, adjusting spreads based on market, customer base, and volatility changes. They aim for higher spreads to lead to more volume when it offsets the costs, maintaining a reasonable baseline for the future while acknowledging the dynamic nature of the market.

A：The company has secured a bit license and expanded its operations in the US. As for future plans, the UK still lacks legislation around crypto trading, but the company has already secured a presence in Asia and Europe. The focus will be on obtaining incremental spot licenses in various geographies, but it is not expected to discuss non-significant items like the UK on the call. The company will continue to gather and share licenses for spot, derivatives, and index business. The big geographical markets have been covered, and the company's focus will be on ongoing license acquisition and management.