Nasdaq Invests $100 Million in Kraken Parent Company Payward

Nasdaq has invested $100 million in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, as part of the New York electronic bourse’s expansion into tokenized assets.

Nasdaq’s venture arm made a $100 million investment in Payward, the exchange operator revealed in a Thursday announcement. As part of the deal, Kraken will offer tokenized versions of Nasdaq-listed stocks on its own platform. The investment builds on Nasdaq’s partnership with Payward announced in March.

The investment valued Kraken’s parent company at $21 billion, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Thursday. Cointelegraph approached Nasdaq for comment on the matter but did not receive a reply before publishing time.

The announcement comes a month after Nasdaq shared plans to acquire Level Markets as part of its push into “always-on” markets. Nasdaq filed a tokenization proposal with the US Securities and Exchange Commission a year ago.

Earlier this month, Kraken partnered with the London Stock Exchange to launch access to 24/5 trading of tokenized stocks that are tracking the value of leading UK equity products starting in 2027.

In April, Deutsche Börse invested $200 million in Payward, as part of the German exchange operator’s plans to offer access to a wider array of blockchain-based securities and tokenized investment products.

According to data compiled by RWA.xyz, the current distributed value of tokenized stocks is more than $2.9 billion, up 7.4% over the past month.