Nasdaq is reportedly putting real money behind Kraken’s parent, Payward, in a move that would value the crypto group at $21 billion and push the two firms deeper into tokenized equities, market surveillance, and settlement rails.
- $100 million Nasdaq Ventures investment
- $21 billion reported Payward valuation, according to Bloomberg
- Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs) targeted for Q2 2027
- Surveillance tools to span crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures, and options
The big point is not just that a major traditional exchange is buying into a crypto firm. It is that Nasdaq and Payward are trying to connect regulated markets with blockchain infrastructure without ditching the controls institutions need when the real money shows up.
Bloomberg reported the valuation, citing people familiar with the matter. The investment is coming through Nasdaq Ventures and follows a partnership that began in March, when the two sides started working on ways to connect regulated equity markets with blockchain networks through xStocks, Payward’s tokenized equities ecosystem.
The next step centers on Nasdaq Equity Tokens, or NETs, with a launch now expected in the second quarter of 2027. Nasdaq says the effort will focus on global distribution, trading, and post-trade systems for those tokens. In plain English, this is about moving equity representation onto blockchain-style rails while keeping the legal and market structure intact enough for serious money to use it.
That “keeping it intact” part is the whole game. Tokenized equities are digital representations of shares on blockchain infrastructure, but the structure can vary a lot. Some tokens are true claims on underlying shares. Others are custodial wrappers. Some preserve voting rights and dividends, while others are closer to a synthetic exposure product with a prettier interface. If the legal and custody setup is sloppy, the whole thing turns into a compliance headache wearing a startup hoodie.
Nasdaq President Tal Cohen described the partnership as a way to modernize market plumbing without losing the trust that makes capital markets work.
“This partnership advances our work on Nasdaq Equity Tokens and helps build a more connected financial system while preserving the trust, transparency and integrity that underpin capital formation.”
That is the clean corporate version. The harsher but more honest version is that Nasdaq wants the upside of blockchain settlement and tokenization without giving up the surveillance, custody, and rulebooks that keep institutions from running for the exits.
Payward’s pitch is more blunt. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi says the current clearing system is expensive, slow, and far more capital-hungry than most people realize.
“More than $2 trillion of stock trades run through the U.S. clearing system every day.”
He said buys and sells net down by roughly 98%, and clearing houses hold between $10 billion and $20 billion of collateral while trades wait to settle.
He added that the move from two-day to one-day settlement in 2024 released $3 billion, and said, “Onchain settlement removes the wait.”
That argument is not crazy. Settlement is the final transfer of cash and assets after a trade, and shorter settlement cycles usually cut counterparty risk and collateral needs. The U.S. already moved from T+2 to T+1 in 2024. Blockchain-based settlement is the next logical push, assuming regulators do not decide the whole thing is too messy, too risky, or too clever by half.
There is also a reason traditional systems move slowly. Slow is not always good, but in finance, speed without legal finality is how you get expensive chaos. The market does not need another “move fast and break things” experiment when the things getting broken include customer assets and regulated obligations.
Payward has been building out the regulated side of this push for months. In May, it completed its acquisition of Bitnomial, a deal agreed at up to $550 million in cash and stock. That acquisition gave Payward access to a regulated U.S. derivatives structure, including a Futures Commission Merchant, a Designated Contract Market, and a Derivatives Clearing Organization.
For readers who do not live and breathe exchange jargon, that matters because each piece fills a different role. An FCM is the customer-facing broker in regulated futures markets. A DCM is the exchange venue for trading those contracts. A DCO is the clearinghouse that stands between buyers and sellers to help guarantee performance. In other words, this was not a vanity purchase. It was a purchase of regulatory plumbing.
Payward has also acquired Backed Finance, the company behind the issuance infrastructure for xStocks. Outside the United States, Kraken clients can already use selected tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds as collateral for leveraged trades. The wider Payward group now includes Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, and CF Benchmarks.
That is a much bigger story than “a crypto exchange added another product.” Payward is building a multi-venue financial stack that reaches into spot crypto, derivatives, benchmarks, tokenized assets, and market infrastructure. The company wants to be infrastructure, not just a trading app with a sleek logo and a compliance department trying not to panic.
The xStocks effort has been moving fast. In March, the effort was described as linking regulated equity markets with blockchain networks. In July, Payward partnered with GTN to take xStocks beyond U.S. equities. At that point, xStocks had passed 500 tokenized assets and reached $37 billion in transaction volume.
Another piece of the puzzle is xChange, an onchain execution layer launched in March that supports more than 70 tokenized equities across Ethereum and Solana. At launch, xChange had $3.5 billion in onchain volume and $25 billion in overall trading volume. Each supported xStock was backed 1:1 by an underlying security held in custody, and trades used atomic settlement, meaning both sides of the trade either happen together or the trade does not happen at all.
That backing structure is the part that actually matters. A tokenized stock product is only as good as its custody, legal rights, and redemption mechanics. If the token really tracks an underlying security and the holder’s rights are clearly defined, the product has a case. If not, it is just a shiny wrapper around trust-me dynamics, which is not exactly a proud financial innovation.
There is also a valuation wrinkle worth keeping straight. Bloomberg reported the new Nasdaq investment values Payward at $21 billion, while separate reporting tied the Bitnomial acquisition to a $20 billion valuation. Those numbers can both be true if they reflect different transaction terms or timing, but they should not be mashed together as if they came from the same round.
Payward is also inching toward the public markets. It confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November, though it has not publicly disclosed a proposed ticker, share price, number of shares, or the exchange where it may list.
The latest financials show a company that is growing, but not exactly coasting. Payward reported adjusted revenue of $508 million in the second quarter, up 17% from a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA fell to $23 million from $80 million. Total platform transaction volume dropped 18% to $310 billion, while funded accounts reached 6.6 million and assets on platforms hit $40 billion.
Asset-based and other revenue accounted for 60% of total revenue, up from 55% a year earlier. That shift matters because it suggests the company is leaning more heavily into custody, platform activity, and asset-linked revenue instead of relying purely on trading churn. Less casino, more financial infrastructure, at least that is the direction it is trying to sell.
Nasdaq’s move is a clear bet that tokenization will become part of mainstream market plumbing, not a sideshow. But the exchange is not embracing the anarchic side of crypto culture. It wants permissioned rails, surveillance, and regulatory compatibility. That is the point.
Payward, meanwhile, is trying to prove that blockchain can do more than speculate on the next meme coin. It wants to show that tokenized assets can work inside serious market structure, with clearing, settlement, and surveillance that institutions can live with.
That ambition is real. So are the problems.
What does Nasdaq’s investment in Payward really mean?
It means a major exchange operator is putting capital behind a crypto company that is trying to build tokenized equity infrastructure. The money also signals that Nasdaq sees blockchain settlement and tokenization as long-term market infrastructure, not just a passing trend.
What are Nasdaq Equity Tokens?
NETs are Nasdaq’s planned issuer-sponsored equity tokens. The goal is to represent equities on blockchain rails while preserving shareholder rights and keeping the structure compatible with regulated markets.
What is xStocks?
xStocks is Payward’s tokenized equities ecosystem. It is being used to connect regulated equity products with blockchain-based trading and settlement infrastructure.
Why does settlement matter so much?
Settlement is the final transfer of cash and assets after a trade, and delays in settlement tie up collateral and increase counterparty risk. Faster or onchain settlement can reduce those frictions, though it still has to work inside the legal and regulatory framework.
Does onchain settlement solve everything?
No. It can reduce waiting and improve efficiency, but it does not eliminate custody, legal-finality, compliance, or dispute-resolution issues. Faster rails can also create faster problems if the structure is weak.
Why is Bitnomial important?
Bitnomial gives Payward access to regulated U.S. derivatives infrastructure, including an FCM, DCM, and DCO. That makes it easier for Payward to build products that look more like institutional market plumbing and less like a crypto side project.
Will tokenized equities be available everywhere?
Probably not. Cross-border rules, securities law, and local market restrictions will likely keep these products fragmented for a while. “Global distribution” sounds great until legal teams start drawing borders.
Are tokenized equities ready for prime time?
Not yet. The market structure is advancing, but the hard parts are still custody, rights, liquidity, and regulation. The tech can move fast; the law usually does not.
The biggest reality check is scale. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the dominant U.S. post-trade utility, says it processed securities transactions with a notional value of U.S. $4.7 quadrillion in 2025. That is the size of the machine any tokenized alternative has to compete with, complement, or slowly chip away at. Blockchain advocates love to talk as if the future arrives by announcement. It does not. It arrives by integration, permissions, and a lot of boring plumbing.
Still, the direction is hard to miss. Nasdaq is backing a crypto-native partner. Payward is expanding into regulated derivatives and tokenized assets. And both sides are betting that markets can become faster, more transparent, and more globally connected without sacrificing the trust that keeps the whole system from wobbling apart.
SEC Prepares Overhaul of Crypto Custody Rules for Nasdaq invests $100 million in Kraken parent, eyeing 2027 Kraken and Nasdaq Team Up to Revolutionize Stock Trading.
For context on the infrastructure side, DTCC: A Leader in Global Financial Market Infrastructure remains the benchmark for post-trade scale, while the regulatory framing around digital assets is evolving through the Statement on Tokenized Securities.
That regulatory ambiguity is why a simple security token offering can still trip over the same old problems: legal rights, custody, and who actually owes what to whom when the music stops.
Nasdaq’s push into tokenized equities also lines up with broader market chatter around ownership, custody, and settlement, including Nasdaq Pushes Tokenized Equities With Kraken as Bending claims that still deserve skepticism until the paperwork and product specs are crystal clear.
And if you want a deeper look at Payward’s operating performance behind all the headline-making tokenization moves, see Kraken Parent Payward Revenue Rises 3% to $507M as the derivatives business continues to become a bigger piece of the puzzle.
