Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Company: Report
Bitcoin Magazine Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Company: Report The deal between Kraken and Nasdaq will help build infrastructure for tokenization, according to a Bloomberg report. This post...
The deal between Kraken and Nasdaq will help build infrastructure for tokenization, according to a Bloomberg report.
Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, Payward, according to reports.
The deal — not yet announced by either party — will help build out structure for tokenized stocks, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal values the crypto company at $21 billion, according to the report.
It comes as Wall Street increasingly eyes up bitcoin and crypto-related infrastructure. Kraken has made deals this year and last with traditional finance firms and the S&P Dow Jones Indices in March made a deal to debut a new derivative contract on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid.
Bloomberg’s report said that Kraken will distribute Nasdaq’s tokenized stocks on its own platform, giving customers the ability to own Nasdaq-listed stocks in a tokenized form.
Wall Street has been eying up crypto companies and their infrastructure particularly because its interested in tokenizing assets like stocks.
In January, the New York Stock Exchange said it was building a platform allowing 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, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, 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, Kraken’s prime brokerage arm, which launched in 2025.
Kraken — like other crypto exchanges — is pushing into the traditional finance world, allowing users to trade stocks, bonds and other assets. The company has sold its app as a “primary account for everything.”
Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
Nasdaq's $100M investment in Kraken's parent Payward signals institutional finance's pivot toward tokenization infrastructure rather than speculation on crypto prices. The deal explicitly targets asset-backed tokenization—particularly equities—positioning Kraken as a distribution layer for traditional finance products wrapped on-chain. This mirrors NYSE's January announcement of 24/7 tokenized equity trading, indicating Wall Street sees blockchain settlement as complementary to existing markets, not competitive.
The $21B valuation reflects market confidence in Kraken's institutional positioning post-FTX. Combined with recent partnerships (S&P Dow Jones indices, SoFi), the pattern shows exchanges consolidating as fintech infrastructure providers rather than pure crypto venues. This represents a material shift: traditional finance firms are investing in crypto plumbing to achieve regulatory-friendly asset tokenization at scale, de-emphasizing volatile trading pairs. The move also signals Nasdaq's confidence that regulatory clarity around tokenized securities is forthcoming—unlikely to invest $100M otherwise.
For the crypto sector, this validates infrastructure-as-a-service as the durable value proposition post-speculation cycle. However, it carries implicit risk: as Wall Street integrates blockchain technology directly, the need for independent crypto exchanges as onramps may diminish. Kraken's bet on becoming the institutional tokenization distributor succeeds only if regulatory frameworks materialize and if custody/settlement preferences shift meaningfully toward blockchain rails.