Nasdaq Ventures has invested $100 million in Payward, the parent company of Kraken, extending a partnership the two firms struck in March covering the trading, custody and settlement of tokenised stocks. Bloomberg reported that the deal values Payward at $21 billion, though that figure does not appear in Nasdaq's own announcement of the investment.
Nasdaq Ventures, the exchange operator's venture arm created in 2017, holds minority stakes across several dozen market infrastructure startups. The Payward investment marks one of its more prominent bets as traditional exchanges race to build rails for round-the-clock trading of tokenised securities.
The valuation implied by the deal represents a rise of $1 billion compared with Kraken's previous funding round. The exchange closed a raise in two tranches at the end of 2025 worth $800 million, on a $20 billion valuation base. Kraken has also been expanding beyond crypto trading, having acquired US broker NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion, and is preparing an initial public offering.
xStocks and the fungibility question
Kraken has run its own tokenised equities product, xStocks, since June 2025, built with Swiss issuer Backed Finance. The offering covers roughly 60 US stocks and ETFs on the Solana blockchain and is available to non-US clients. Kraken has operated the product outside the United States for over a year.
Nasdaq's own ambitions are narrower in structure but potentially larger in scope. In September 2025 the exchange filed a request with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to allow tokenised and traditional versions of the same security to trade side by side in a single order book, with settlement remaining at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. Nasdaq's condition is that any tokenised stock must stay fungible with the ordinary share and not create a parallel market or a distinct price. The exchange, which hosts the listings of Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia, is targeting a launch during 2026, subject to SEC approval.
A crowded field
Nasdaq is not alone in pursuing this ground. Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has committed up to $2 billion to Polymarket. CME Group is preparing a seven-day-a-week crypto listing. Robinhood has distributed tokenised stocks in Europe since summer 2025, while Coinbase is pressing the SEC to permit tokenised stock equivalents in the US market.
Not every incumbent is enthusiastic. Citadel Securities has written to the SEC warning that tokenisation risks fragmenting liquidity across parallel venues. The regulator itself, under chair Paul Atkins, has launched an initiative called Project Crypto aimed at adapting trading rules to accommodate blockchain-registered securities.
For European investors watching from outside the US regulatory perimeter, the contest between Nasdaq's fungible, DTCC-settled model and Kraken's Solana-based xStocks points to two competing visions of how tokenised equities might eventually reach a broader market, one anchored in existing clearing infrastructure, the other built natively on public blockchains.
