Nasdaq Invests $100 Million in Kraken Parent Payward at $21 Billion Valuation: Report
Key Takeaways
- •Bloomberg reported that Nasdaq is investing $100 million in Kraken parent Payward at a $21 billion valuation.
- •The reported investment would support infrastructure for blockchain-based tokenized stocks.
- •Kraken is expected to offer tokenized Nasdaq-listed stocks to customers, but neither the deal nor a launch date has been confirmed.
- •The transaction reflects growing integration between traditional finance companies and crypto-native platforms.
- •Payward recently agreed to route SoFi’s crypto orders through Kraken Prime and list SoFi’s stablecoin on Kraken.
Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, according to a Bloomberg report published Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The deal — not yet announced by either party — will help build out infrastructure for tokenized stocks, blockchain-based representations of traditional equities. It values the crypto company at $21 billion, according to the report. With neither company having confirmed the arrangement publicly, official word on the investment — and on when tokenized Nasdaq stocks would go live on Kraken — remains pending.
The investment comes as Wall Street increasingly turns its attention to bitcoin and crypto-related infrastructure. Kraken has struck deals with traditional finance firms both this year and last, and in March, S&P Dow Jones Indices made a deal to debut a new derivative contract on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid. Taken together, the deals point to a two-way convergence: traditional finance institutions plugging into crypto infrastructure, and crypto-native platforms building their own bridges into traditional assets.
Per Bloomberg's report, Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks on its own platform, giving customers the ability to own Nasdaq-listed stocks in tokenized form.
Wall Street has been eyeing crypto companies and their infrastructure, driven in particular by its interest in tokenizing assets like stocks. In January, the New York Stock Exchange said it was building a platform that would allow traders to buy and sell tokenized versions of US-listed equities and exchange-traded funds, and settle those trades on the blockchain, 24/7.
Just last week, Payward and fintech company SoFi Technologies announced a deal to route SoFi customers' crypto orders through Kraken's institutional trading platform and list SoFi's stablecoin on the exchange. Under the agreement, SoFi will send its digital asset order flow to Kraken Prime, the prime brokerage arm that Kraken launched in 2025.
Kraken — like other crypto exchanges — has been pushing into the traditional finance world, allowing users to trade stocks, bonds, and other assets. The company has marketed its app as a "primary account for everything."
This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Mathew Di Salvo.
