Nasdaq Ventures puts $100M into Kraken parent Payward, reportedly at $21B

What happened

Nasdaq's strategic investment arm, Nasdaq Ventures, has agreed to invest $100 million in Payward, the parent company of Kraken, crypto.news and The Defiant report, both citing a Nasdaq announcement made on Thursday. The Defiant reports the deal extends a tokenized-equities partnership the two firms struck in March and adds a market surveillance agreement placing Nasdaq technology inside Payward's trading venues.

According to crypto.news, Cryptopolitan and The Defiant, Payward will deploy Nasdaq's surveillance system across venues covering crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures and options, while Kraken becomes a distribution point for Nasdaq Equity Tokens, or NETs, which the companies expect to launch in the second quarter of 2027. Cryptopolitan reports the tokens are designed to carry voting rights identical to those of ordinary shares, unlike most tokenized equity products that offer price exposure only; The Defiant reports the NET design is issuer-sponsored, with the blockchain record integrated into the issuer's official share registry so that a token transfer moves the underlying security itself.

The Defiant reports that Payward's role, set out in March, is to run KYC and AML checks and settle NET transactions in eligible jurisdictions through xStocks, which excludes the U.S. and the UK and is offered through licensed entities in Bermuda and Cyprus. Crypto.news reports Nasdaq said the next phase of the partnership will focus on global distribution, trading and post-trade systems for NETs.

Nasdaq president Tal Cohen said the expanded relationship reflects "our conviction that the company can play an important role in building the infrastructure that supports this evolution," according to The Defiant. Crypto.news quotes Cohen saying the partnership "advances our work on Nasdaq Equity Tokens and helps build a more connected financial system while preserving the trust, transparency and integrity that underpin capital formation."

Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi built the case around clearing collateral, according to both crypto.news and The Defiant: more than $2 trillion of stock trades run through the U.S. clearing system daily, buys and sells net down by roughly 98%, and the clearing house holds $10 billion to $20 billion against the remainder while trades await settlement. "Onchain settlement removes the wait," Sethi said, per both outlets. "The next phase of the collaboration is planned to advance Nasdaq Equity Tokens onto rails that do not close, with shareholder rights intact."

The numbers

Bloomberg valued the deal at $21 billion, citing people familiar with the matter, as reported by Cryptopolitan, Bitcoin Magazine, crypto.news and The Defiant. Cryptopolitan and The Defiant both note Nasdaq's own statement carried no valuation.

The Defiant reports Payward raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation in November 2025 from backers including Citadel Securities, Jane Street and DRW Venture Capital; Cryptopolitan puts Citadel Securities' portion at $200 million. Deutsche Börse's $200 million April investment bought about 1.5% on a fully diluted basis and implied roughly $13.3 billion, a 33% markdown, according to The Defiant, which calculates the Nasdaq round at 58% above that price; Cryptopolitan attributes the $13.3 billion implied figure to Bloomberg and cites a private-market mark of about $10.77 billion as of September 9.

Payward's second-quarter results, reported by Cryptopolitan, crypto.news and The Defiant, showed adjusted revenue of $508 million, up 17% year over year, adjusted EBITDA of $23 million against about $80 million a year earlier — a 71% decline, per Cryptopolitan — platform transaction volume down 18% to $310 billion, and funded accounts up 42% to 6.6 million. Crypto.news adds $40 billion in platform assets and asset-based and other revenue at 60% of the total, against 55% a year earlier.

The Defiant reports Nasdaq shares traded at $93.68 on Thursday morning, down 0.6% from the prior close, for a market capitalisation of about $52 billion, and that Wells Fargo was Nasdaq's exclusive capital markets advisor.

Context

Cryptopolitan frames Nasdaq as the third major exchange operator this year to take a crypto-exchange stake, after Intercontinental Exchange invested in OKX in March at a $25 billion valuation, taking a board seat and agreeing to open NYSE tokenized equities to OKX's 120 million accounts, and Deutsche Börse's April purchase. The Defiant reports the Nasdaq deal lands nine days after a comparable arrangement with the London Stock Exchange, leaving Payward with parallel positions across Nasdaq, LSEG and Deutsche Börse while each builds a competing route to tokenized equities. Cryptopolitan dates the LSE agreement to September 1 and describes it as bringing the exchange's 100 largest listings onto xStocks; The Defiant reports LSE said it intends, subject to regulatory approval, to list xStocks and trade them on its LSE 24 venue in 2027.

On regulatory permission, The Defiant reports the SEC approved Nasdaq's rule change on March 18 as modified by a second amendment, covering trading in tokenized form during a DTC-operated pilot limited to Russell 1000 constituents and certain ETFs, with at least 30 calendar days' notice to members before trading begins.

Cryptopolitan and crypto.news both report Payward's listing plans are stalled: a confidential draft S-1 was filed with the SEC in November 2025, and the debut is now targeted no earlier than the second quarter of 2027. Cryptopolitan adds the company cut about 150 workers and has grown by acquisition, closing on derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million; crypto.news dates the completion to May and says it brought three CFTC registrations. Bitcoin Magazine reports Payward and SoFi Technologies agreed last week to route SoFi customers' crypto orders through Kraken Prime and list SoFi's stablecoin.

Disputed or unconfirmed

The $21 billion valuation rests entirely on Bloomberg's sourcing; Cryptopolitan and The Defiant both flag that Nasdaq did not confirm it. The Defiant adds that Nasdaq's release does not disclose the size of the stake, whether the money buys newly issued or existing shares, or any governance rights, and that neither company said what Payward will pay for surveillance or whether that contract was priced independently of the investment. The Defiant also notes Nasdaq's own forward-looking disclosure lists both halves of the deal as not guaranteed.

Bitcoin Magazine, writing from the Bloomberg report, described the deal as "not yet announced by either party," while crypto.news and The Defiant report a Nasdaq statement issued Thursday — a sequencing difference rather than a conflict on substance.

xStocks figures differ by outlet and date: crypto.news cites more than $25 billion in transaction volume with over $4 billion onchain and more than 85,000 holders at the March announcement, and over 500 tokenized assets and $37 billion by July; The Defiant reports Payward said in July that xStocks passed $35 billion cumulative with $12.5 billion settled onchain across seven networks and close to 200,000 holders. The Defiant separately cites RWA.xyz data putting tokenized stocks at about $2.93 billion in distributed value as of September 9, with xStocks third at $631 million behind Ondo at $859 million and Binance's bStocks at $647 million.