- Nasdaq Ventures invested $100 million in Payward, the parent company of Kraken.
- The deal values Payward at $21 billion.
- The funding backs Nasdaq Equity Tokens, a framework for putting listed stocks on-chain.
- Global trading of the tokens is scheduled for Q2 2027.
Nasdaq Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Nasdaq Inc., has committed $100 million to Payward, the corporate parent of the Kraken exchange. The investment values Payward at $21 billion and funds the commercial rollout of Nasdaq Equity Tokens, a framework designed to move publicly listed shares onto blockchain rails. The two companies first struck a lower-key partnership in March 2026, and this round turns that arrangement into a full build-out. Live trading of the tokenized stocks is scheduled for the second quarter of 2027.
The build sits inside Digital Liquidity Networks, a Nasdaq markets business that the exchange operator stood up in August 2026, roughly six weeks before the money moved. Its remit is narrow and specific: connect Nasdaq’s legacy trading platforms to digital asset infrastructure and ship the tokenization stack. Payward brings the distribution side through Kraken’s xStocks ecosystem, where the new tokens will plug in directly. The $100 million is not a passive bet. It ties Nasdaq’s own market plumbing to a crypto exchange it now expects to carry regulated securities.
Why a NET is a share and an xStock is only a bet on the price
Kraken already runs tokenized stocks under the xStocks brand. Those instruments follow the price of a listed company and pass through dividends, but they do not carry voting rights or the legal protections that come with holding the actual share. Nasdaq Equity Tokens take a different route. They are issuer-sponsored, which means the listed company itself tokenizes its native equity, so the token holder keeps the same voting rights and shareholder protections as an ordinary public investor. That distinction is the whole point of the framework. It is what separates a regulated equity token from a synthetic tracker.
The $10 billion to $20 billion that sits idle every day
Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi laid out the economic case in plain numbers. Around $2 trillion in stock trades pass through the U.S. clearing system every day. Almost all of it cancels out: buy and sell orders offset each other, so trades net down by roughly 98% and only the small remainder actually needs to change hands. That remainder still ties up money. Clearinghouses hold somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion in collateral at any given moment, parked while trades wait out the settlement cycle. When U.S. markets shortened that cycle from two days to one in 2024, the change freed up around $3 billion in trapped capital. On-chain settlement removes the wait altogether, because ownership transfers at the moment of the trade rather than a day later.
Kraken had to hand its surveillance to Nasdaq to get the money
The cash comes with an obligation. Payward agreed to deploy Nasdaq’s market surveillance technology across all of its venues, spanning crypto, traditional equities, tokenized stocks, futures and options. Nasdaq has sold this surveillance stack to exchanges and regulators for years, and putting it across Kraken’s markets is how the deal reaches SEC-grade compliance. For an exchange that wants to hold regulated securities, that monitoring layer is a prerequisite, not an add-on.
Continuous trading arrives the same quarter Payward tries to IPO
If the timeline holds, listed stocks will trade continuously rather than only during market hours. Retail and institutional wallets, smart contracts and on-chain applications would interact directly with Nasdaq-listed securities through xStocks, without routing through a traditional broker pipeline. Issuers gain a second venue for their equity that runs 24/7/365. The freed settlement collateral is the less visible gain, since capital that currently waits out clearing cycles could move immediately.
The launch window lands at the same time as Payward’s own public listing. The company pushed its IPO back to no earlier than Q2 2027 after a softer trading quarter that brought a profit decline alongside rising revenue and a round of small layoffs. Its institutional push runs wider than Nasdaq: Payward has signed a 24/7 settlement and liquidity alliance with SoFi Technologies and a tokenization deal with the London Stock Exchange Group, placing the same on-chain rails across several of the largest names in traditional finance.