Nasdaq has committed $100 million to Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, to develop natively tokenized equities for global distribution by Q2 2027. The investment, announced in September 2026 at a $21 billion valuation, follows a separate $200 million stake by Deutsche Börse in...
"If you tokenize all those instruments along with the flow of money, then the collateral becomes very fluid." — Adena Friedman, CEO, Nasdaq
Nasdaq has committed $100 million to Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, to develop natively tokenized equities for global distribution by Q2 2027. The investment, announced in September 2026 at a $21 billion valuation, follows a separate $200 million stake by Deutsche Börse in April at a $13.3 billion valuation. Combined, two of the world's largest exchange operators have deployed $300 million into a single crypto-native firm to build tokenized equity infrastructure.
Speaking at TOKEN2049 in Singapore on October 9, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman argued that tokenizing collateral assets — Treasurys, equities, money market funds — could free tens of billions of dollars currently immobilized across the global financial system. The comments coincide with Nasdaq's acquisition of LeveL Markets, the third-largest U.S. alternative trading system by volume, and the launch of a new internal division called Digital Liquidity Networks to oversee always-on trading infrastructure. A 23-hour trading session is set for December 6, pending final DTCC and SIP readiness.
The moves place Nasdaq at the center of a tokenized equities market that has grown from $33 million in January 2025 to roughly $3 billion in late 2026 — a 90x expansion in under two years. Payward's xStocks framework has crossed $35 billion in cumulative volume and 200,000 holders. Whether this infrastructure buildout translates into sustained secondary-market liquidity or remains a distribution mechanism for synthetically wrapped shares is the open question.
Nasdaq's $100 million investment in Payward deepens a tokenized equities partnership first announced in March 2026, according to Ledger Insights. The deal values Payward at $21 billion, up from $20 billion at its previous primary round. Payward raised $800 million in November 2025 from Citadel Securities, DRW Ventures, and Jane Street. Deutsche Börse followed with a $200 million secondary share purchase in April 2026, acquiring a 1.5% fully diluted stake at a $13.3 billion implied valuation.
The investment carries two concrete deliverables. First, Payward will build an "equities transformation gateway" using its xStocks framework that connects Nasdaq's regulated market infrastructure with permissioned and permissionless blockchain networks. Second, Payward's trading venues — spanning crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures, and options — will adopt Nasdaq's market surveillance technology.
The resulting product, Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs), is targeted for Q2 2027 launch. Payward has postponed its planned IPO to 2027, with Nasdaq positioning itself as the intended listing venue, according to Ledger Insights.
xStocks is Payward's tokenized equity framework. Each token is backed 1:1 by the underlying share, held in custody by a regulated entity. The tokens are blockchain-agnostic, interoperable across chains, and composable with DeFi protocols, according to Kraken's corporate blog.
Performance data as of October 2026: xStocks has processed $35 billion in cumulative volume across 200,000 holders, according to Payward's one-year retrospective. The framework currently supports tokenized versions of U.S.-listed equities and is expanding to the 100 largest London Stock Exchange-listed companies following a September 1 partnership with LSEG.
The LSEG collaboration adds a second major exchange to the xStocks ecosystem. The London Stock Exchange intends to list and support trading in xStocks on its planned LSE 24 venue in 2027, subject to regulatory approval, according to CoinDesk. However, xStocks tokens are currently unavailable to UK-based investors and are not registered under the U.S. Securities Act.
The distinction matters: xStocks tokens trade as security entitlements under UCC Article 8, not as the underlying securities themselves. This legal structure provides economic exposure — including dividend and voting rights in supported jurisdictions — but does not make the token a registered security in the United States.
On August 11, 2026, Nasdaq announced the acquisition of LeveL Markets LLC, a U.S. off-exchange equity trading venue that ranks as the third-largest alternative trading system in the country by volume, according to Nasdaq's investor relations filing. LeveL Markets processes hundreds of millions of shares daily and connects with more than 2,500 buy-side and sell-side clients. Financial terms were not disclosed.
LeveL Markets will operate within a newly formed Nasdaq unit called Digital Liquidity Networks, led by Roland Chai. The division consolidates Nasdaq's tokenization capabilities, digital asset technology, and the always-on infrastructure that Friedman described at TOKEN2049. Chai described its mandate as building "the programmable, always-on market infrastructure of the future," according to Nasdaq's press release.
The organizational signal is explicit: Nasdaq is not treating tokenization as a side project or innovation lab experiment. It has created a dedicated business unit, staffed it with a named leader, and anchored it with a major ATS acquisition. The question is whether the unit can generate revenue sufficient to justify the capital deployed.
Nasdaq plans to launch a 23-hour equity trading session on December 6, 2026, adding an overnight window from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. ET to existing extended-hours sessions. The proposed schedule would allow trading from 9 p.m. Sunday through 8 p.m. Friday, with a single one-hour daily pause for processing.
The SEC approved Nasdaq's "Global Trading Hours" proposal on April 10, 2026. Two dependencies remain: the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) must complete clearing system updates, and the Securities Information Processor (SIP) must finish overnight system upgrades, according to news.bitcoin.com.
The 23-hour session is not a tokenized product. It runs on conventional exchange infrastructure. But it represents the same strategic thesis: markets should run continuously, and the infrastructure should be programmable. Tokenized equities extend that logic to 24/7 operation, settlement in USDC or other stablecoins, and cross-venue portability through xStocks-compatible wallets.
Nasdaq's regular session — 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET — remains unchanged and continues to set reference prices. Additional safeguards for overnight trading include static price bands that reject orders outside specified limits, pending regulatory approval.
The tokenized equities market has grown from approximately $33 million in January 2025 to roughly $3 billion by late 2026, according to The Block. CoinDesk reported a 2,900% year-over-year increase as of January 2026, and the segment has continued expanding.
Market share breakdown as of August 2026, per The Block: Ondo Global Markets holds the largest share, accounting for more than half of tokenized equity value. Securitize, which went public on the NYSE under ticker SECZ, has crossed $2 billion in onchain market cap for its tokenized stocks offering. xStocks and other platforms account for the remainder.
Securitize launched tokenized versions of 12 U.S. equities on Solana on October 8, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Tesla, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Circle, SpaceX, Strategy, and Palantir. These tokens settle in USDC with Jump Trading providing liquidity.
The broader tokenized RWA market — including Treasurys, private credit, and real estate — stands between $38 billion and $51 billion depending on methodology, according to multiple sources including CoinGecko and Traders Union. Tokenized equities represent approximately 8% of that total. Boston Consulting Group projects the tokenized RWA market could reach $16 trillion by 2030.
Nasdaq is not operating in a vacuum. The competitive landscape for tokenized equities infrastructure now includes:
Deutsche Börse: $200 million invested in Payward, with plans for new products across trading, custody, settlement, collateral management, and tokenized assets, according to Deutsche Börse's corporate announcement.
London Stock Exchange Group: Partnership with Payward to tokenize 100 UK-listed companies, with an LSE 24 trading venue planned for 2027.
Securitize: Publicly traded (NYSE: SECZ), launched tokenized stocks on Solana, partnered with Jump Trading and Jupiter for onchain trading. Has crossed $2 billion in tokenized stock market cap.
Ondo Finance: Largest provider of both tokenized Treasurys and tokenized stocks, with more than $2.5 billion in total value locked as of January 2026, according to CoinGecko.
Moscow Exchange: Preparing December 1, 2026 launch of crypto trading for five major assets, with SberCIB projecting 3.5–4 trillion rubles ($38–44 billion) in year-one volume.
The pattern is clear: traditional exchange operators are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build or acquire tokenized asset infrastructure. The economic logic centers on capturing trading fees from a market that operates 24/7 rather than 6.5 hours per day, and on monetizing the post-trade layer — custody, settlement, collateral management — where margins are higher than on execution alone.
Three risks warrant monitoring.
Regulatory fragmentation. xStocks tokens are not registered under the U.S. Securities Act and are unavailable to U.S. persons. Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs) are designed for global distribution but face jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approval. The GENIUS Act has provided a stablecoin framework, but no equivalent statute governs tokenized securities at the federal level. The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, released August 18, 2026, is in comment period until October 20 but primarily addresses token offerings, not secondary market infrastructure for tokenized equities.
Liquidity depth. The tokenized equities market at $3 billion is 0.005% of the approximately $60 trillion global equity market. xStocks' $35 billion in cumulative volume over one year compares to Nasdaq's single-day equity volume, which regularly exceeds $300 billion. Trading volume in tokenized equities remains thin relative to traditional markets, raising questions about price discovery quality and execution costs.
Counterparty concentration. Payward is now the infrastructure provider for Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse, and LSEG's tokenization ambitions simultaneously. A single entity serving as the technology layer for three of the world's largest exchange groups creates dependency risk. Payward's $21 billion valuation prices in successful execution across all three partnerships.
Nasdaq's capital commitments — $100 million into Payward, the LeveL Markets acquisition, and the Digital Liquidity Networks organizational restructuring — represent the clearest signal yet that a top-tier exchange operator views tokenized equities as core infrastructure rather than an experiment. Friedman's TOKEN2049 remarks about trapped collateral frame the thesis in terms of capital efficiency: if assets move as tokens and settle in stablecoins, the plumbing connecting exchanges, custodians, and clearinghouses can operate continuously with lower friction.
The gap between ambition and adoption remains large. A $3 billion tokenized equities market built on thin secondary liquidity, jurisdiction-specific restrictions, and a single dominant infrastructure provider does not yet constitute a structural shift in how equities trade. What it does constitute is a $300 million bet by Nasdaq and Deutsche Börse that the infrastructure must exist before the demand can materialize. Whether that bet pays off depends on regulatory clarity, institutional uptake, and whether 24/7 tokenized trading generates enough volume to sustain the economics of the venues built to serve it.