Nasdaq Invests $100M in Payward, Expanding Blockchain Partnership
Nasdaq has invested $100 million in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. This investment comes as part of a deeper partnership between the two companies to develop tokenized market infrastructure in the US.
The deal was carried out by Nasdaq's venture capital arm, Nasdaq Ventures. It builds on an existing agreement signed in March between the two firms.
Through this collaboration, Nasdaq's Digital Liquidity Networks (DLN) will work with Payward to support the development of Nasdaq equity tokens (NETs). NETs are set to launch in H2 2027.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward, highlighted the potential benefits of tokenized settlement: 'More than $2 trillion of stock trades run through the US clearing system every day. Buys and sells net down by about 98 percent, and the clearing house holds $10 billion to $20 billion of collateral against what is left while it waits a day to settle.'
He added that on-chain settlement could cut this wait from two days to one in 2024, releasing around $3 billion.