Nasdaq puts $100M into Kraken parent at $21B

Decrypt reported on 10 September 2026, citing Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter, that Nasdaq's venture arm is putting $100 million into Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, at a $21 billion valuation. The $100 million and $21 billion figures travel with those unnamed sources.

This is secondary reporting of a private investment. It is not a Nasdaq investor-relations press release, and the dollar figures are not taken from a public SEC exhibit.

The money extends a partnership struck in March. Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks with the same voting rights as ordinary shares. Most tokenized equity products give holders price exposure only. Nasdaq's design, as Decrypt describes it, puts issuers at the center and builds a gateway with Kraken between regulated and on-chain venues.

This is the third major exchange-operator stake in a crypto exchange this year. Intercontinental Exchange invested in OKX in March at a $25 billion valuation. Deutsche Boerse paid $200 million for 1.5% of Payward in April, a slice Bloomberg calculated as about $13.3 billion. Nasdaq, per the same Bloomberg sources, plans its own token in the second quarter of next year.

Payward's marks have not sat still. It raised $800 million at $20 billion last November and reused that $20 billion figure in April when talking about a Bitnomial deal. The April Deutsche Boerse math and this $21 billion print do not match.

Payward filed a confidential S-1 in November, then shelved the listing in March. The same month, Decrypt says, Kraken became the first crypto firm granted access to the Federal Reserve's core payments system.

Related Finpresso tape includes Visa's $20 billion stablecoin settlement run rate, the DOJ look at Nvidia's Groq license, and Oracle's $664 billion cloud backlog. Same-week equity deal news sits on Bending Spoons' $1.36 billion Miro agreement.

If you mark Payward or tokenized-equity distribution, put $13.3 billion (April Boerse math), $20 billion (November raise and April Bitnomial talk), and $21 billion (this Nasdaq print) on the same page. Treat voting rights on Nasdaq-tokenized stocks as the commercial design in the Decrypt report, not as a filed listing term, until a joint announcement or registration statement lands.