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Nasdaq, the $51B exchange operator that powers a sizable chunk of global equities trading, just announced it’s teaming up with Kraken to tokenize US stocks on-chain. The partnership, revealed on March 9, represents one of the most concrete steps yet toward merging traditional capital markets with blockchain infrastructure.
Here’s the thing: we’ve heard “tokenize everything” pitches for years. What makes this one different is that both parties actually have the regulatory standing and market plumbing to pull it off.
What the partnership actually involves
Nasdaq is designing what it calls an “equity token” framework — essentially a way for public companies to issue tokenized versions of their shares while retaining full control over governance, proxy voting, and corporate actions. Think of it as wrapping a traditional stock in a blockchain-native container, but keeping the issuing company firmly in the driver’s seat.
Kraken’s role centers on its xStocks platform, which has already processed over $3.5B in on-chain transaction volume since launching in June 2025. The crypto exchange will serve as a key venue for trading and settling these tokenized equities, bridging the gap between regulated markets and decentralized trading infrastructure.
The target date for going live with tokenized equity trading and settlement is the first half of 2027. That’s roughly 15 months from now, which in crypto time feels like an eternity but in traditional finance timelines is actually pretty aggressive.
Tal Cohen, Nasdaq’s president, framed the initiative as issuer-first by design.
“We believe that public companies should always remain at the center of the equity market ecosystem. This issuer-sponsored approach for tokenized equity securities is designed to empower public companies and enhance global accessibility to U.S. equity markets.”
In English: companies get to control how their tokenized shares behave, who holds them, and how shareholder engagement works — rather than ceding those decisions to third-party tokenization platforms.
The regulatory groundwork is already laid
This didn’t come out of nowhere. Nasdaq filed a formal tokenization proposal with the SEC back in September 2025, seeking permission for equity securities — including these issuer-sponsored tokens — to trade on its regulated venues. The filing arrived during a period of increasing clarity from the Commission regarding digital asset securities.
The SEC has gradually moved toward recognizing tokenized assets alongside traditional securities under existing legal frameworks. That’s a significant shift from the enforcement-heavy posture of earlier years, and it’s created an opening that Nasdaq appears eager to exploit.
Kraken, meanwhile, picked up a piece of infrastructure that makes this partnership considerably more credible. On March 4, just five days before the announcement, the exchange secured a Federal Reserve master account. That’s a first for any crypto-native firm, and it grants Kraken direct access to the Fedwire settlement system — the backbone of US dollar payments between financial institutions.
Having a Fed master account transforms Kraken from a crypto exchange with banking aspirations into something closer to an actual financial institution. For institutional counterparties considering whether to trade tokenized equities on a crypto platform, that distinction matters enormously.
Kraken’s recent financials suggest it has the scale to back up its ambitions. The firm reported $648M in revenue during Q3 2025, a 114% jump year-over-year, with 5.2 million funded accounts on its books. Nasdaq, for its part, posted $22.5B in revenue for 2025, up 1.7% from the prior year, with an operating margin of 13.3%.
Why this matters for investors and the broader market
The global tokenization market was valued at roughly $4B in 2025. Projections peg it at $24.1B by 2035, implying a compound annual growth rate just shy of 20%. The US portion alone could grow from about $1.15B to nearly $7B over the same period.
Those are still modest figures relative to the $50 trillion-plus US equity market. But the infrastructure being built now will determine who captures the value as tokenized trading scales. Nasdaq and Kraken are essentially positioning themselves as the toll collectors on a highway that hasn’t been fully paved yet.
For retail investors, tokenized equities could unlock fractional ownership in ways current systems struggle to deliver efficiently. Buying 0.001 shares of a high-priced stock is technically possible today through some brokerages, but the back-end mechanics are clunky. Blockchain-native settlement could make this seamless, with near-instant clearing and potentially lower transaction costs.
For institutional players, the appeal is different. Programmable corporate actions mean that dividends, stock splits, and proxy votes could execute automatically via smart contracts. No more paper ballots arriving three weeks late. No more reconciliation headaches across custodians and transfer agents.
The always-on nature of blockchain markets also introduces 24/7 trading capability. US equities currently trade during a roughly 6.5-hour window on weekdays. Tokenized versions could theoretically change hands at 2 AM on a Sunday. Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends on your relationship with sleep.
There are real risks to watch, though. Liquidity fragmentation is the obvious one. If tokenized shares trade on multiple venues — both centralized exchanges and DeFi protocols — market depth could splinter, potentially widening spreads and increasing volatility for less-liquid names. Nasdaq’s emphasis on “interoperability” and “industry standards” suggests they’re aware of this problem, but solving it is another matter entirely.
Regulatory durability is another concern. The current SEC posture is accommodating, but commissions change, political winds shift, and what’s permissible today could face scrutiny tomorrow. Any investor building a strategy around tokenized equity access should factor in the possibility that the rules evolve mid-game.
There’s also the question of competitive response. BlackRock, through its BUIDL tokenized fund, has already planted a flag in tokenized real-world assets. JPMorgan’s Onyx platform has been experimenting with blockchain-based settlement for years. Franklin Templeton runs a tokenized money market fund on public blockchains. Nasdaq and Kraken aren’t entering an empty field — they’re entering one where deep-pocketed incumbents are already building.
What sets this partnership apart is the combination of a major exchange’s regulatory credibility with a crypto-native firm’s on-chain infrastructure and user base. Neither party could easily replicate what the other brings to the table. Nasdaq doesn’t have millions of crypto-native users comfortable with on-chain transactions. Kraken doesn’t have decades of relationships with public company issuers and institutional market makers.
The estimated transaction fee revenue from a maturing tokenized equities market could reach $3-5B annually based on current fee structures. For context, that figure would represent a meaningful revenue stream for both firms, even accounting for the competitive pressure that typically compresses margins as markets mature.
Bottom line
Nasdaq and Kraken are betting that the future of equity markets runs on blockchain rails, and they’re building the infrastructure to make that happen before competitors lock in the standards. The H1 2027 launch timeline, Kraken’s new Fed master account, and Nasdaq’s SEC filing give this initiative more structural credibility than most tokenization announcements. Whether the market is actually ready to trade stocks on-chain at scale remains the open question — but for the first time, the plumbing looks like it might be.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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