Nasdaq Partners With Kraken’s Parent Company to Tokenize Traditional Assets

Nasdaq is joining forces with Payward, the parent company of the American crypto exchange Kraken, to debut tokenized equities to investors.

Aimed at helping investors make the most of their investments, the tokenized assets will be usable within both the traditional financial system and the decentralized ecosystem.

Nasdaq Taps xStocks

In September 2025, Nasdaq submitted a proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), requesting permission to trade tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The stock exchange proposes an equity token design. This design allows users to seamlessly exchange tokenized assets for actual stocks and ETFs on a one-to-one basis. Under this structure, holders of tokenized stocks can participate in voting and receive dividends, just like traditional shareholders.

Nasdaq taps Kraken’s recently acquired xStocks to facilitate the development of the new service. For context, xStocks is a platform known for bridging publicly traded equities with blockchain technology. Despite being less than a year old, the platform has attained a total traded volume of over $25 billion.

Highlighting the extent in which tokenized assets can be used, Kraken’s Co-CEO, Arjun Sethi, said:

“Instead of simply representing exposure to a company, tokenized equities can operate as collateral within unified trading systems that support spot markets, cross-margin trading, derivatives, perpetual futures, and financing environments.”

The announcement revealed that Nasdaq will launch this design in the first half of 2027.

Note that xStocks is not available in the U.S. or the UK. As a result, individuals in these countries, as well as other restricted countries, will not be able to access the service.

TradFi Meets Crypto

Interestingly, the latest initiative is one among several efforts Kraken has made to explore integrating the crypto industry with the traditional financial ecosystem. Earlier this month, the crypto exchange revealed that it had become the first crypto firm to gain direct access to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s core payment systems.

In other news, rival exchanges are making similar moves to expand their tentacles beyond the crypto ecosystem. Last week, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent firm of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), invested in OKX to support its listing of tokenized stocks and derivatives. Upon securing the needed approvals, the new service is expected to commence in the second half of this year.

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