Bullish Review

Fees explained

Bullish charges in basis points and quotes every market as maker over taker. The rates below apply to an individual customer as of September 2026 (source: Bullish help center, "Understanding fees").

Institutional pricing is different. It starts at 0.3 bps taker and rises with a Same Direction Score, which measures how often your taker volume is followed by others trading the same way. Above a 50% score the fee climbs in steps to a 2.5 bps cap. Bullish has said the institutional minimum moves from 0.3 bps to 0.5 bps in early September 2026.

Deposits are free. Withdrawals cost $30 by Fedwire or international wire, €2 by SEPA, and nothing by CUBIX or BLINC.

A cost estimate for a $500 purchase on Bullish and Kraken appears here once the published fee schedules are verified.

History and ownership

Bullish was incorporated in the Cayman Islands on June 22, 2021 as an exempted company and became the group parent after an internal reorganisation in April 2023. It completed an initial public offering in August 2025 and its ordinary shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BLSH (source: Bullish annual report on Form 20-F for 2025, filed March 10, 2026). Brendan Blumer is chairman and Tom Farley, formerly president of the NYSE Group, is chief executive.

The group is not only an exchange. It acquired the CoinDesk businesses in November 2023 and CCData in October 2024, so the same parent owns a trading venue, a news publication, an index business, and a data business (source: same filing). Bullish discloses this as a risk in its own annual report, noting that CoinDesk's coverage could influence trading prices and that operating an exchange alongside a news outlet may attract regulatory scrutiny. Read that conflict for yourself before treating CoinDesk reporting as independent of the venue.

Public listing is the strongest disclosure signal in this directory. Audited accounts, quarterly results, and a legally required account of litigation and licences all follow from it.

Products and markets

Bullish's public market data endpoint returned 1,828 markets in September 2026 (source: Bullish public API, markets endpoint). The composition is unusual: 1,566 options, 199 spot pairs, 46 perpetual contracts, and 17 dated futures. Quote currencies are dominated by USDC at 1,702 markets, with US dollars, Tether, euros, and several other stablecoins behind it.

That mix tells you who this venue is for. A retail buyer wanting a single Bitcoin purchase is not the target; an institution running an options book with cross-margin against spot is. Bullish describes a single global central limit order book combined with a proprietary automated market maker that quotes into the same book from treasury pools, and unified portfolio margin across spot, options, perpetuals, and dated futures (source: Bullish company site, read September 2026).

If you want a straightforward on-ramp instead, start at Buy Bitcoin or Buy USDC, where retail-oriented venues are compared directly.

Security record and custody

The licence footprint is the substance here. In the United States, Bullish holds a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services, is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as a money services business, and holds money transmitter licences or no-action letters in most states. In Germany it holds proprietary trading, principal brokerage, and crypto custody permissions from BaFin, and it completed a MiCAR crypto-asset service provider authorisation from BaFin in September 2025. In Hong Kong it holds Type 1 and Type 7 licences plus a virtual asset trading platform licence from the Securities and Futures Commission. In Gibraltar it holds a DLT licence from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission, which it obtained before onboarding its first customer in 2021 (source: Bullish Form 20-F for 2025).

The Hong Kong licence is independently checkable: Bullish HK Markets Limited appears on the Securities and Futures Commission's list of licensed virtual asset trading platforms with a licence date of February 18, 2025 (source: SFC, list of licensed virtual asset trading platforms). The European authorisation likewise appears on the Dutch register as a cross-border service under Article 65 of MiCAR, home state Germany (source: Authority for the Financial Markets, crypto register).

Bullish operates as a full reserve exchange, holding customer assets 1:1 and segregated from company assets, and is audited by Deloitte (source: Bullish company site). RampAtlas found no hack, insolvency, or enforcement action against a Bullish entity in any primary, court, or regulator source we checked.

Deposits and withdrawals

Deposits are free, and withdrawal pricing depends entirely on the rail (source: Bullish help center, "Understanding fees").

The wire pricing tells you the expected ticket size. A $30 wire fee is trivial on a seven-figure transfer and punitive on a $500 one. Access is by on-screen trading, API, order and execution management systems, or an over-the-counter facility, with FIX, REST, and WebSocket connectivity and private network options, which again is institutional plumbing rather than a retail app.

Support and usability

Bullish is a professional venue and the interface assumes professional habits: portfolio margin, sub-accounts, and an order book with a market maker quoting into it. Fully segregated sub-accounts and unified margining across spot, options, perpetuals, and futures are the features clients come for.

For an individual, the pricing is genuinely attractive: 0% maker and 0.005% taker on standard spot markets is among the lowest published anywhere, and stablecoin-to-cash conversion is free. The barrier is everything around it, from the eligibility rules on the automated market maker product to the assumption that you already understand derivatives and liquidation.

Verdict

Bullish suits an institution or a serious individual trader who wants very low spot fees, deep options and perpetuals markets, and a counterparty that is NYSE-listed and licensed by four separate regulators. The combination of audited accounts, a full reserve model, and independently checkable licences is close to the top of what this industry offers.

Look elsewhere if you want a simple retail app, fiat deposits by card, or a broad altcoin list, none of which this venue is built to provide, and note the $30 wire withdrawal if your balances are small. Anyone comparing venues should also weigh the CoinDesk ownership conflict Bullish itself discloses. Start at Compare and Germany.