Bullish names former NYSE president Stacey Cunningham as president

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The first woman to lead the New York Stock Exchange joins a crypto exchange run by another former NYSE president

Mon 9 Nov 2026 · 06:50 EST · 3 min read

In Crypto

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Stacey Cunningham, who ran the New York Stock Exchange from May 2018 to January 2022, is joining Bullish as president.

If you’re keeping score, that means a regulated digital asset exchange now has two former NYSE presidents in its top ranks.

The hire matters because of timing. Bullish is pushing into derivatives and tokenization, two areas where institutional clients care about who is minding the store.

Who Stacey Cunningham is, and why her resume stands out

Cunningham was the 67th president of the NYSE. She was also the first woman to hold that role in the exchange’s history.

Her path to the top was not a parachute drop. She started at the NYSE as an intern in 1994, then worked her way up across equity markets, operations and technology.

Two parts of her tenure stand out for an exchange like Bullish.

The first is technology. Cunningham was a central figure in rolling out Pillar, the NYSE’s trading platform.

The second is crisis management. Cunningham steered the exchange through the COVID-19 pandemic. That period also brought a surge in IPO activity across 2020 and 2021, which meant more companies arriving at the door just as normal operations were being upended.

What Bullish looks like today

Bullish describes itself as a regulated digital asset exchange focused on institutional clients.

The company is led by CEO Tom Farley, who also previously served as president of the NYSE. Farley held that job before Cunningham did.

Bullish has been building out its derivatives business. Recent reports indicate the exchange ranked #2 globally in options trading by open interest in one recent period.

Open interest measures the total number of options contracts still outstanding, not yet closed or settled. It works as a rough gauge of how much real positioning sits on a platform, as opposed to quick in-and-out trading.

The company is also pursuing growth across multiple jurisdictions, holding listings and licenses in various markets.

As of the latest available information, Bullish’s executive management page had not yet been updated to list Cunningham in the role.

The TradFi-to-crypto pipeline keeps flowing

Crypto firms have increasingly recruited executives with long careers in regulated markets. The logic is simple. Institutions want to see familiar faces running the platforms they trade on, especially faces that have dealt with regulators, outages and market turmoil before.

Bullish has leaned into that playbook harder than most. Hiring one former NYSE president is a statement. Hiring two starts to look like a strategy.

What this means for Bullish and institutional crypto

The most immediate effect is credibility. Institutional investors tend to judge a trading venue partly on the people running it.

That pitch could carry extra weight in derivatives. Options and other derivatives are where risk management, margin systems and market integrity get tested most.

Tokenization is the other piece to watch. Tokenization refers to representing traditional assets, like stocks or bonds, as digital tokens on a blockchain. It sits right at the overlap of Cunningham’s background and Bullish’s ambitions.

Bullish now has two executives with nearly identical career highlights. How the company divides responsibilities between its CEO and its new president will shape whether the hire adds new capabilities or simply doubles down on the same strengths.

Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.