Nasdaq Pumps $100M Into Kraken Operator at $21B Valuation, Tokenized Equities Go Mainstream

Nasdaq Inc. is committing $100 million through its venture capital arm to Kraken operator Payward Inc., valuing the digital asset company at $21 billion. The investment reflects an accelerating race among the world’s dominant exchange operators to secure distribution channels and institutional architecture across digital asset markets. Kraken will distribute Nasdaq-listed equities in tokenized form directly to its retail and institutional user base under an expanded commercial arrangement first established in March. Shares issued through the system will carry identical voting rights to standard common stock traded on Nasdaq’s public exchange. Unlike previous iterations of tokenized equities offered across the cryptocurrency sector—which functioned primarily as synthetic derivatives or price-tracking instruments—Nasdaq’s architecture embeds issuers directly into the lifecycle of the assets. Kraken currently handles institutional distribution for these instruments through its business-to-business division, Payward Services. The series of corporate transactions follows a shifting valuation trajectory for San Francisco-based Payward over the past year. In November, the company closed an $800 million funding round at a $20 billion valuation. It pegged itself to that same $20 billion baseline in April when reaching an agreement to acquire Bitnomial, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated designated contract market, clearinghouse, and broker. The new Nasdaq financing marks a recovery in that valuation metric, setting the firm’s equity worth at $21 billion. Payward’s push to integrate directly with established financial infrastructure has run parallel to changes in its public market roadmap. The company submitted a confidential draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November to prepare for an initial public offering, but opted to pause the proposed listing process in March. That same month, Kraken secured direct access to the Federal Reserve’s core payments infrastructure, becoming the first digital asset institution to clear transactions over the central bank’s settlement system. The connection allows the company to settle fiat transactions directly on central bank balance sheets, bypassing traditional intermediary correspondent banking networks as it scales tokenized securities and settlement operations. Nasdaq and Kraken are constructing a bidirectional technical gateway designed to facilitate the transfer of tokenized securities between regulated financial trading venues and public blockchain infrastructure. Traditional exchanges are seeking to integrate round-the-clock settlement, fractional ownership, and global on-chain distribution directly into legacy equity structures. In addition to the equity pipeline, Nasdaq is preparing to launch its own proprietary token during the second quarter of next year, according to people familiar with the initiative. Nasdaq’s transaction marks the third major direct investment by a legacy stock exchange operator into a cryptocurrency exchange platform this year. In March, Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the parent entity of the New York Stock Exchange, acquired an equity stake and secured a board seat in crypto exchange OKX at a $25 billion valuation. That arrangement established a framework to make tokenized NYSE-listed equities available to OKX’s base of 120 million registered customer accounts. The following month, German market operator Deutsche Börse AG acquired a 1.5% equity stake in Payward for $200 million. However, the $200 million transaction completed by Deutsche Börse that same month implied an equity valuation of roughly $13.3 billion.