Nasdaq Invests $100 Million in Kraken Parent to Advance Tokenized Stocks
Published Sep 10, 2026
Nasdaq is deepening its involvement in tokenized financial markets through an expanded relationship with Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.
Nasdaq Ventures has agreed to invest $100 million in Payward as the companies continue developing Nasdaq Equity Tokens and the infrastructure required to distribute, trade and settle tokenized shares. Payward will also deploy Nasdaq’s market-surveillance technology across its growing portfolio of trading platforms.
The agreement brings together one of the world’s largest traditional market-infrastructure providers and a digital asset company that operates across crypto, equities, derivatives and tokenized assets. It also shows that tokenized stocks are moving beyond isolated blockchain products and closer to the established capital-markets system.
Building Nasdaq Equity Tokens
Nasdaq and Payward are working on an issuer-focused structure known as Nasdaq Equity Tokens, or NETs. The companies expect the tokens to launch during the second quarter of 2027, although that remains a forward-looking target rather than a guaranteed release date.
The goal is to represent public-company shares in tokenized form while preserving the shareholder rights, governance standards and investor protections associated with conventional securities. That distinction matters because some existing tokenized-stock products only provide economic exposure to an underlying share without conveying direct ownership or full shareholder rights.
Nasdaq’s model is intended to keep issuers at the center of the process. Rather than creating an unofficial blockchain representation of a company’s stock, NETs are designed as issuer-sponsored instruments that can operate across regulated financial systems and supported blockchain networks.
The companies will now work on the distribution, trading and post-trade capabilities needed to support those assets. Payward’s xStocks ecosystem is expected to provide part of the infrastructure connecting regulated markets with eligible onchain environments.
Why Settlement Is a Major Focus
Tokenization is often presented as a way to trade stocks around the clock, but the larger opportunity may sit behind the trade. Clearing, collateral management, ownership records and settlement still rely on systems built around defined market hours and delayed completion.
Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi said more than $2 trillion in stock trades pass through the U.S. clearing system each day. Buys and sells are netted down by approximately 98%, after which a clearinghouse holds between $10 billion and $20 billion in collateral while the remaining transactions await settlement.
The United States shortened its standard securities settlement period from two business days to one in 2024. According to Sethi, that change released approximately $3 billion in capital. Moving appropriate parts of settlement onchain could reduce the remaining delay further, potentially lowering collateral requirements and allowing capital to move more efficiently.
That potential is one reason Nasdaq describes its objective as always-on infrastructure rather than simply extended trading hours. The broader vision is a market in which assets, liquidity and ownership information can move continuously while retaining the safeguards expected in regulated capital markets.
Nasdaq Surveillance Is Coming to Payward’s Markets
The expanded partnership also includes a market-surveillance agreement. Payward plans to adopt Nasdaq’s surveillance technology across trading venues covering crypto assets, traditional equities, tokenized equities, futures and options.
Surveillance systems monitor markets for suspicious trading patterns, manipulation and other activity that could undermine market integrity. Extending those controls across Payward’s platforms could help the company present a more institutionally familiar operating model as it connects conventional and blockchain-based markets.
This part of the agreement is especially significant because around-the-clock markets create different monitoring demands. Trading can move between venues, jurisdictions and asset types without waiting for a traditional exchange to open. Market oversight therefore needs to work across the entire connected environment rather than within one limited trading session.
A Strategic Investment in Tokenization
Nasdaq’s proposed $100 million investment gives the relationship more weight than a standard technology partnership. The exchange operator is putting capital behind Payward while the two companies build commercial and operational infrastructure together.
Their collaboration began earlier in 2026 with plans for a gateway connecting permissioned equity markets and eligible permissionless blockchain networks. Payward reported at that time that xStocks had surpassed $25 billion in total transaction volume, including more than $4 billion settled onchain, with over 85,000 unique holders across supported networks.
Those figures demonstrate demand, but scaling tokenized equities into mainstream markets requires more than transaction volume. Issuer authorization, regulatory compliance, accurate ownership records, corporate actions, liquidity and investor protection all need to function consistently.
Nasdaq and Payward are betting that combining established market standards with blockchain distribution can address those requirements. If NETs launch as expected in 2027, the project could become an important test of whether tokenized shares can expand beyond crypto-native platforms without sacrificing the rights and protections attached to traditional equity ownership.