Nasdaq is stepping up its positioning on a track that has not yet been fully laid.
On September 10, Nasdaq announced through its strategic investment arm Nasdaq Ventures that it had agreed to invest $100 million in Kraken parent company Payward. The two sides also confirmed they will continue advancing the operation and commercial infrastructure of Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs, Nasdaq equity tokens), with plans to launch in the second quarter of 2027. Payward will integrate Nasdaq's market surveillance technology into its trading venues, covering cryptocurrencies, equities, tokenized equities, futures, and options.
That same day, Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying that this round corresponds to a Payward valuation of about $21 billion.
xStocks cumulative trading volume reaches $25 billion
The partnership between Nasdaq and Payward began with a product announcement in the first half of 2026. The two sides announced the joint development of an "equity conversion gateway": at its core, it uses Payward's xStocks framework to connect regulated licensed markets with permissionless on-chain networks in eligible jurisdictions. Payward described its own role very specifically — in eligible regions, it will initially serve as the primary settlement layer for NETs, while Payward Services will handle KYC / AML. Nasdaq, meanwhile, will be responsible for issuer-led equity token design: using digital form to represent listed company equity while preserving, as much as possible, the regulatory framework, governance rights, and market protections of traditional securities.
At the time, the two sides described the launch timing for NETs and related DLT services as "expected to begin operations from the first quarter of 2027," while the September statement pushed the timetable back by one quarter.
Payward's RWA product is xStocks. According to the latest Dune data, its cumulative trading volume exceeds $25 billion, of which on-chain settlement exceeds $4 billion, with more than 85,000 holders.
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In September of this year, Payward and the London Stock Exchange announced that they would turn the 100 largest companies by market capitalization on the LSE into 1:1-backed xStocks.
In December 2025, Deutsche Börse Group and Kraken / Payward announced a partnership, also aimed at regulated crypto, tokenized markets, and derivatives. On April 14, 2026, Deutsche Börse took a further step, announcing the purchase of Payward shares for $200 million through the secondary market, representing an approximately 1.5% fully diluted stake, with closing subject to regulatory approval.
The September 10 statement placed the collaboration under Nasdaq's newly established Digital Liquidity Networks (DLN), launched in August. The mandate of this unit is "round-the-clock market infrastructure."
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Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi directly addressed the pain points of the traditional clearing and settlement system in the statement: U.S. equity clearing processes more than $2 trillion daily, but after netting only about 2% remains, and clearinghouses still need to set aside $10 billion to $20 billion in collateral for the residual positions, then wait another day for settlement to complete; in 2024, shortening the cycle from T+2 to T+1 released about $3 billion at once. The next phase is to put NETs onto a "24/7 trading network while fully preserving the governance rights and regulatory protections of traditional securities."
IPO Delayed to Earliest Q2 Next Year
Kraken began public operations in 2013, with Payward as its parent company.
In November 2025, Payward announced the completion of a total of $800 million in financing, split into two tranches. The first was led by institutional investors, including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, HSG, Tribe Capital, and the Sethi family office, among others; this was followed by a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities, with a valuation set at $20 billion. The intended use of funds was stated plainly: to bring traditional financial products on-chain, build out trading, payments, and tokenized assets, and expand into Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
However, constrained by the crypto market entering a bear market, its IPO process has been repeatedly shelved and delayed.
In March 2026, Reuters and others reported that Payward paused its IPO due to market conditions. In September this year, CoinDesk, citing two people familiar with the matter, said Payward's listing timing has been pushed back to as early as the second quarter of 2027.
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Current Polymarket data shows the market is pricing in only a 4% probability of a Kraken IPO this year.
Staking a Position in US Equity Tokenization
For Nasdaq, the $100 million investment buys three things that have already been proven: xStocks, a distribution and settlement pipeline that has already demonstrated volume; a gateway design that can move NETs from a permissioned market to a restricted on-chain environment; and the ability to extend its own surveillance standards into a platform that is building out multiple assets. If DLN's "round-the-clock liquidity" remains just a departmental strategy, it is nothing but a PowerPoint. Only by plugging into Payward's retail gateway and on-chain settlement layer does it have a chance of becoming a product that can go live in Q2 2027.
Traditional trading platforms in 2026 are no longer content with pilot programs — ICE and OKX are in talks over a joint venture gateway, the London Stock Exchange is discussing tokenizing its listed equities, and Deutsche Börse has already taken a seat on the shareholder list. Nasdaq's move looks more like staking a position in the same pipeline race, not a symbolic endorsement of the crypto industry.
xStocks has clear restrictions for US users, and tokenized stocks do not currently equate automatically to a share in a US brokerage account.
Kraken has clearly been shifting in recent years from a spot crypto exchange to a multi-asset platform. The next question it needs to answer is not how much more it can raise, but how many issuers will be willing to issue tokens under the standard of "rights retained" when NETs go live in Q2 2027, and in which jurisdictions those tokens can actually be bought, transferred, and voted.
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