Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Payward at $21B Valuation

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In brief

Nasdaq's venture arm is putting $100 million into Payward, valuing the Kraken parent at $21 billion.
Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks, which would carry the same voting rights as ordinary shares.
It is the third time this year an established exchange operator has taken a stake in a crypto exchange.

Nasdaq is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, in a deal valuing it at $21 billion, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The money comes from Nasdaq's venture arm and extends a partnership struck in March. Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks on its own platform, giving customers Nasdaq-listed equities in token form, carrying the same voting rights as shares traded on the exchange.

Most tokenized equity products hand holders price exposure and nothing else. Nasdaq's design puts issuers at the center instead, and it has been building a gateway with Kraken to move tokenized equities between regulated and on-chain venues. Kraken already offers them through Payward Services, its business-to-business arm.

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Exchanges are buying in

Nasdaq is the latest established operator to take a crypto exchange stake this year. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, invested in OKX in March at a $25 billion valuation, taking a board seat and agreeing to open NYSE tokenized equities markets to OKX's 120 million accounts. Deutsche Börse paid $200 million for 1.5% of Payward the following month.

Nasdaq plans its own token in the second quarter of next year, according to Bloomberg's sources.

Payward's valuation has been unsettled through all of it. It raised $800 million at $20 billion last November and used that figure again in April when agreeing to buy derivatives exchange Bitnomial. Deutsche Börse's stake, bought the same month, implied about $13.3 billion by Bloomberg's calculation.

Its route to the public markets has been slower. Payward filed a confidential S-1 in November, then shelved the listing in March, the same month Kraken became the first crypto firm granted access to the Federal Reserve's core payments system.