Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Payward at $21B Valuation, Boosting Bitcoin (BTC) Tokenization

Nasdaq Bets $100M on Payward

Nasdaq has committed $100 million to Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, in a deal that values the digital-asset group at roughly $21 billion, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the terms. The investment was formally announced on September 10 and funds a partnership built around one goal: distributing Nasdaq's tokenized stocks on Kraken's platform, so customers can hold Nasdaq-listed equities in tokenized form. Payward's release confirms the $100 million figure but stays silent on valuation — the $21 billion number comes from press reporting, not the company itself. Tokenization, in this context, means issuing a blockchain token that represents an underlying security, so the share can move and settle outside traditional market hours. The deal lands as Wall Street presses deeper into crypto infrastructure. In March, S&P Dow Jones Indices agreed to debut a new contract trading product on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid. In January, the New York Stock Exchange said it was building a platform for tokenized versions of US-listed equities and exchange-traded funds, settled on blockchain rails around the clock. And just last week, Payward and fintech firm SoFi unveiled a separate arrangement under which SoFi routes customer digital-asset orders through Kraken Prime, the prime brokerage arm launched in 2025, and lists SoFi's stablecoin on the exchange, putting it alongside issuers like Circle. The pattern now spans index providers, exchange operators and payment networks such as Visa, all probing tokenized rails for assets that trade today only during market hours. For Kraken, the Nasdaq check extends a deliberate push into traditional finance: the company has marketed its app as a “primary account for everything” — crypto, stocks and bonds in one place.

Nasdaq Equity Tokens Target Q2 2027

The announcement builds on technical groundwork laid on March 9, when Nasdaq and Payward unveiled plans for an Equities Transformation Gateway — a system designed to shuttle tokenized shares between regulated markets and open blockchain networks while preserving the rights and pricing of the underlying stock. Its centerpiece is Nasdaq Equity Tokens, or NETs: digital representations of listed shares engineered to keep shareholder rights, regulatory protections and corporate actions intact, a deliberate contrast with crypto tokens that merely track a share price. Nasdaq targets a second-quarter 2027 launch, connecting regulated securities markets to public blockchains in jurisdictions where such products are permitted. Payward will adopt Nasdaq's market-surveillance technology spanning crypto, equities, securitized stocks, futures and options, and its Payward Services unit will run KYC and AML checks for users accessing NETs. The infrastructure already has traction: at the time of the announcement, cumulative xStocks volume had topped $25 billion, including more than $4 billion settled on-chain, across more than 85,000 unique holders. Nasdaq president Tal Cohen said the next era of market evolution will depend on how efficiently capital and assets move through the financial system, with the partnership preserving what he called “trust, transparency and integrity.” Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi argued that on-chain settlement removes the waiting time and collateral requirements embedded in traditional equity clearing, saying the firms intend to move Nasdaq equity tokens onto rails that never close while fully preserving shareholder entitlements. Payward's own numbers give the venture runway: adjusted revenue of $508 million in Q2 2026, up 17% year-on-year, on $310 billion of trading volume and $40 billion in platform assets — following earlier strategic checks from Citadel Securities, $200 million at a $20 billion valuation in November 2025, and Deutsche Börse, $200 million for roughly 1.5% of fully diluted equity in April 2026. Payward confidentially filed for a US IPO in November 2025. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Wall Street's Tokenization Race Hardens

Taken together, the two developments trace a single arc: incumbents are no longer building tokenization from scratch — they are buying equity in the crypto rails that already clear real volume. The primary disclosure, the company's official press release, confirms a $100 million strategic investment led by Nasdaq Ventures; it states the round size and investor but leaves the valuation undisclosed, with the $21 billion figure resting on separate press reporting rather than the filing itself. Our read at COINOTAG: regulatory execution — how securities law treats token transfers, how on-chain voting and corporate actions function, and which public blockchains qualify — plus custody friction such as blind signing, will determine whether NETs reach mainstream portfolios by the targeted 2027 launch.