Kraken parent Payward bets billions on becoming financial infrastructure, not just an exchange
- —Payward is building a unified platform with 'one ledger' for trading, banking and asset management
- —Acquired NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion and Bitnomial for $550 million to add futures and derivatives
- —Nasdaq to invest $100 million; Nasdaq Equity Tokens launch expected in Q2 2027
- —Kraken serves 6.6 million funded accounts holding $40–50 billion across 190+ countries
Why it matters: Kraken is shifting from an exchange model to an infrastructure provider, intensifying competition with Coinbase and Binance for institutional flows.
Source: CoinDesk