- Nasdaq Ventures has agreed to invest US$100 million (AU$139 million) in Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, in a deal reported to value the company at US$21 billion (AU$29.19 billion).
- The two firms will launch Nasdaq Equity Tokens, blockchain versions of Nasdaq-listed stocks that carry shareholder voting rights, distributed through Kraken from the second quarter of 2027.
- Payward will also run Nasdaq’s market surveillance technology across its crypto, equities, futures and options venues to watch for manipulation.
Nasdaq has agreed to invest US$100 million (AU$139 million) in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, the two firms said on September 10, deepening a partnership to move Nasdaq-listed stocks onto the blockchain.
The investment, made through Nasdaq Ventures, values Payward at US$21 billion (AU$29.19 billion), a figure neither company disclosed in its announcement.
Payward was valued at US$20 billion (AU$27.8 billion) in a fundraising round late last year and filed confidentially for a US listing in November. It has expanded through acquisitions this year, buying the derivatives venue Bitnomial and the payments firm Reap.
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Tokenised Nasdaq Stocks
The centrepiece is Nasdaq Equity Tokens, blockchain-based versions of Nasdaq-listed shares that Kraken’s platform will distribute and that will carry voting rights equivalent to the underlying stock.
The companies expect to launch them in the second quarter of 2027, building on an equities gateway they unveiled in March that links regulated, permissioned markets with permissionless blockchain networks through Kraken’s xStocks framework. Kraken bought Backed Finance, which operates xStocks, late last year.
The tokens would go further than Kraken’s existing xStocks, which opened pre-IPO SpaceX shares to traders outside the United States but carry no voting or dividend rights and are not available in Australia. Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the case for the shift is settlement speed.
“More than $2 trillion of stock trades run through the U.S. clearing system every day”, he said. US stock trades settle a day after they are struck, down from two days before 2024.
As a second leg of the partnership, Payward will adopt Nasdaq’s market surveillance technology across its trading venues, including crypto, equities, tokenised equities, futures and options, to monitor for manipulation and other trading abuses.
Nasdaq President Tal Cohen said the next phase of markets “will be defined by how efficiently and seamlessly capital and assets move across the financial system with durable liquidity”.
The deal deepens a race to put shares on crypto rails. An Australian exchange has moved to unite crypto and traditional-market trading on one platform, and rival venues have listed tokenised stocks of their own.
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