Nasdaq Just Bet $100 Million on Kraken

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Nasdaq has just made a $100 million investment into Payward, the parent company of Kraken — but the real story could be much bigger than the money.

In today’s Daily Crypto Deep Dive , we break down Nasdaq and Kraken’s expanding push into tokenized equities and what it could mean for the future of global financial markets.

Nasdaq and Payward are working on infrastructure around Nasdaq Equity Tokens , potentially bringing traditional stocks onto blockchain-based rails capable of operating far beyond the normal opening and closing hours of conventional exchanges.

Could shares in companies such as Nvidia, Apple and Tesla eventually trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week ? Could blockchain reduce settlement times from days to minutes or even seconds? And if traditional equities become tokenized, what happens to voting rights, dividends, custody and the legal definition of actually owning a share?

We also examine the growing battle over tokenized stocks, including the controversy surrounding Robinhood and AMC, and why one of the biggest challenges facing this new market is ensuring a token represents more than simply price exposure.

There are major advantages to always-on markets — faster settlement, potentially more efficient capital movement and access to markets outside traditional trading hours — but there are serious risks too. Thin overnight liquidity, violent price moves, regulatory questions and markets that effectively never switch off could fundamentally change how investors experience risk.

For years, crypto was trying to get onto Wall Street.

These notes are supplied by Crypto News Today and are not a transcript. No separate source links were supplied with this edition.