Nasdaq Is Investing $100M in Kraken Parent Payward: Report

According to reports, Nasdaq Inc. is putting $100 million into Payward, the business that owns crypto exchange Kraken.

Neither company has announced the deal yet. Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter, reported Thursday that the investment is meant to help build the framework for tokenized stocks. The transaction values the crypto firm at $21 billion, the report said.

The move comes as Wall Street increasingly focuses on bitcoin and the infrastructure surrounding crypto. Kraken has struck deals with traditional finance firms both this year and last, and in March the S&P Dow Jones Indices reached a deal to launch a new derivative contract on Hyperliquid, the decentralized exchange.

Bloomberg's report says Kraken will offer Nasdaq's tokenized stocks on its own platform, so customers can hold Nasdaq-listed equities in tokenized form.

Wall Street's focus on crypto companies and their infrastructure stems in large part from an interest in tokenizing assets such as stocks.

In January, the New York Stock Exchange said it was building a venue where traders could buy and sell tokenized versions of US-listed equities and exchange-traded funds, with settlement handled on the blockchain 24/7.

As recently as last week, Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, and fintech company SoFi Technologies unveiled a deal to send SoFi customers' crypto orders through Kraken's institutional trading platform and have SoFi's stablecoin listed on the exchange.

Under that deal, SoFi will direct its digital asset order flow to Kraken Prime, Kraken's prime brokerage arm, which launched in 2025.

Kraken, like other crypto exchanges, is moving further into traditional finance, giving users access to trading in stocks, bonds and other assets. The company has pitched its app as a “primary account for everything.”