Nasdaq has invested $100 million in Payward, the parent company of Kraken, pushing its tokenized stock partnership with the crypto exchange beyond commercial cooperation and into an equity tie-up.
According to Foresight, the investment was made on Sept. 10 through Nasdaq Ventures, the exchange operator's strategic investment arm. The report says the deal builds on a tokenized equities partnership the two sides launched in March rather than standing as a simple financial investment.
Kraken to distribute Nasdaq's planned NETs product
Under the arrangement disclosed by the two companies, Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's planned tokenized stock product, Nasdaq Equity Tokens, or NETs, on its platform. The launch is targeted for the second quarter of 2027.
Based on Nasdaq's current design, NETs will retain shareholder rights associated with traditional equities, including voting rights. The report says Nasdaq has repeatedly highlighted that feature because most tokenized stock products on the market today give holders price exposure but do not attach shareholder rights.
Payward to adopt Nasdaq market surveillance technology
In exchange, Payward agreed to use Nasdaq's market surveillance system across all of its trading settings, including spot crypto, stocks, tokenized equities, and futures and options.
The article says that surveillance technology is already used by exchanges, regulators, banks, and brokerages around the world. For Payward, integrating the system adds market oversight capabilities associated with traditional capital markets as it expands into multi-asset trading.
The report also says that legal rights tied to shares, issuer governance, and market rules will remain mainly within the traditional capital markets framework. Kraken and xStocks, by contrast, provide the distribution and infrastructure gateway into crypto-native markets.
Deutsche Boerse and ICE have also taken stakes in crypto platforms
Foresight says at least three established exchange groups have pursued similar moves this year, though with different levels of involvement.
Deutsche Boerse moved earlier. In December 2025, it announced a strategic partnership with Kraken covering regulated crypto, tokenized markets, derivatives, and institutional liquidity. The agreement also included Kraken's access to its FX platform 360T and the listing of Eurex derivatives on Kraken.
In February 2026, the first result went live: Kraken's tokenized stock product xStocks launched on 360X, Deutsche Boerse's regulated trading platform. In April, Deutsche Boerse followed up with another $200 million, buying roughly 1.5% of Payward and turning a partnership that had already been running for four months into a direct equity relationship.
Another deal came in March, when Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $200 million in crypto exchange OKX at a $25 billion valuation and secured a board seat.
On June 22, the two companies moved the partnership forward again by announcing a 50-50 joint venture called OKXICE. The venture is intended to operate as a licensed broker-dealer and futures commission merchant, providing OKX's U.S. and overseas clients with access to ICE futures markets and the NYSE's tokenized stock market. That step still requires regulatory approval and has not yet gone live.
Incumbent exchanges are buying existing crypto distribution channels
The article argues that while the three approaches differ in depth, they point in the same direction: traditional exchange groups are not building crypto distribution networks from scratch. Instead, they are buying stakes in channels that already have real trading volume.
It cites Kraken's tokenized stock product xStocks as one example. Cumulative trading volume has exceeded $40 billion, and the number of holders has passed 200,000. On Sept. 1, the London Stock Exchange also announced that it would tokenize the shares of its 100 largest listed companies by market capitalization and distribute them on that platform.
In the report's framing, the channel has already proven it can attract traffic. What incumbent exchanges need to do is buy part of that channel and embed their own rules into it, which is faster than building an entire distribution system for crypto users on their own.
The model is still not an industry standard
Foresight says the current setup, in which issuance remains on one side and distribution is outsourced to another, is still limited to separate arrangements by Nasdaq and ICE rather than an industry-wide standard.
Even so, the direction is becoming clearer in the report's view. Traditional exchanges are no longer treating crypto exchanges as counterparts to guard against. They are treating them as ready-made distribution channels worth buying into. Crypto exchanges, for their part, are becoming more willing to integrate the market infrastructure, regulatory experience, and technical capabilities that traditional exchanges already have instead of rebuilding every part themselves.
The article adds that if NETs launches smoothly in 2027 and voting rights can be passed on-chain to holders without loss, more exchange groups may adopt the same division of labor. In that setup, institutions such as Nasdaq, the NYSE, and the London Stock Exchange would continue to control issuance standards and regulatory relationships, while crypto exchanges such as Kraken and OKX would keep control of access to crypto-native users.
Viewed alongside the moves by ICE and Deutsche Boerse, the report says the significance of Nasdaq's $100 million investment goes beyond its size. It reflects a broader push by major exchange operators this year to bind themselves, with actual capital, to the users and distribution channels that crypto exchanges have already built.
