Nasdaq and Kraken Are Building a Platform to Trade Tokenized Stocks Around the Clock

The world’s second-largest stock exchange and one of crypto’s oldest major platforms announced a formal partnership on March 9 to create infrastructure for blockchain-based versions of publicly listed shares and ETFs.

What the Partnership Actually Builds

The collaboration merges Nasdaq’s regulated market infrastructure with Kraken’s xStocks framework under what the two companies are calling an equities transformation gateway. The core product is tokenized shares of public companies that carry identical rights to conventional shares: voting in proxy ballots, receiving dividend payments, and full legal equivalence with the underlying equity.

The interchangeability mechanism is the technical detail that separates this from previous tokenized stock experiments. Both the tokenized version and the conventional share would carry the same CUSIP number and settle through the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation. A tokenized share and a traditional share of the same company would be functionally identical instruments settling through the same infrastructure, just accessible through different rails. This proposal builds on a framework Nasdaq submitted to the SEC in September 2025.

That design choice addresses the fragmentation problem that has limited earlier tokenized equity projects. If tokenized and conventional shares settle separately, liquidity splits between two markets and price discovery becomes complicated. If they settle through the same system with the same identifier, the tokenized version is not a parallel market. It is the same market on a different interface.

What Kraken Brings to the Structure

Kraken’s role is distribution rather than infrastructure. The exchange will make tokenized shares available to customers in Europe and other international markets as the primary distribution partner. The geographic focus on non-US markets initially reflects regulatory reality: the SEC approval required for US retail access is pending, while European markets under MiCA provide a clearer immediate pathway.

This is the second major Kraken development today. Earlier this morning, Coinbase launched its MiFID-regulated futures platform across 26 European countries. Both moves target European institutional and retail investors simultaneously, using regulatory frameworks that are clearer and faster to navigate than the current US environment. European crypto infrastructure is attracting American exchange investment at a pace that reflects the regulatory gap between the two jurisdictions.

The 24/7 Element and Why It Matters

Traditional equity markets operate during exchange hours, roughly 9:30 am to 4:00 pm in their primary time zones, with extended hours trading available but limited in liquidity. Tokenized shares on blockchain rails have no inherent reason to respect those hours. The platform is designed for around-the-clock trading, which creates genuine utility for international investors in time zones where US market hours fall overnight.

Whether 24/7 trading produces meaningful liquidity outside traditional hours depends on market maker participation. A market that is technically open at 3 am Tokyo time is only useful if someone is quoting prices. Nasdaq’s involvement provides the institutional credibility to attract market makers who might not engage with a crypto-native tokenization platform operating independently.

The Timeline and What Stands Between Now and Launch

Infrastructure is expected to become operational in the first half of 2027, pending SEC approval. That is approximately 14 to 16 months from now. The SEC approval requirement is not a formality. The commission has historically moved slowly on novel equity market structure proposals, and tokenized shares settling through DTCC alongside conventional shares raises questions about custody, investor protection, and market integrity that the agency will examine carefully.

The RWA active address data published earlier today showed tokenized public equity with only 21,705 active addresses globally despite years of development effort. Nasdaq’s brand and DTCC’s settlement infrastructure represent a structural upgrade over everything that has attempted equity tokenization previously. Whether that upgrade is sufficient to move the active user number from thousands to millions is what 2027 will begin to answer.

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