Nasdaq's venture capital arm is putting $100 million into Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, as the two firms build infrastructure to distribute and trade tokenized equities by the second quarter of 2027. The investment values Payward at $21 billion, according to Bloomberg, and formalizes a partnership that began with testing Nasdaq Equity Tokens.
The infrastructure play
The new phase moves beyond testing into building a parallel market structure: digital representations of publicly traded securities issued on a blockchain network, with Nasdaq supplying its market-surveillance technology across Payward's venues. Holders of these tokenized assets do not receive outright ownership of the underlying shares, a distinction that has already surfaced in a public dispute between Robinhood and AMC over tokenized versions of AMC stock offered without the issuer's involvement.
The valuation and the bet
Payward's $21 billion valuation reflects a wager that Kraken can evolve from a crypto venue into a multi-asset platform spanning stocks, derivatives and other traditional products. Nasdaq president Tal Cohen framed the partnership as conviction that Payward "can play an important role in building the infrastructure that supports this evolution" toward a system where capital and assets move more efficiently across the financial system.
The rights question
The Robinhood-AMC spat offers a preview of the structural ambiguity tokenized equities introduce. AMC argues the products create a synthetic market conveying economic exposure without shareholder rights; Robinhood countered on CNBC that it and others are free to create financial products referencing public stocks. Nasdaq's entry into this space with a regulated-exchange pedigree may force a clearer definition of what a tokenized share actually represents.
What to watch
The second-quarter 2027 target is aggressive for infrastructure that must satisfy both blockchain settlement and legacy regulatory frameworks. If the timeline holds, Nasdaq will have built a venue where shares can exist on-chain alongside traditional rails, potentially enabling around-the-clock trading and faster settlement. Whether demand materializes beyond the crypto-native crowd remains the open question.