Nasdaq and ICE partner with Kraken and OKX to tokenize the $126 trillion global stock market, targeting 24/7 trading and instant blockchain settlement.
Wall Street is no longer watching from the sidelines. Two of the biggest exchange operators on the planet just made their most direct blockchain plays yet, and the $126 trillion global stock market may never trade the same way again.
Nasdaq is building a framework that lets publicly listed companies issue blockchain-based shares. Those tokenized versions would preserve traditional ownership rights. To push them out globally, Nasdaq is working with Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, according to CoinDesk. The offering could go live in the first half of 2027.
Days before that, Intercontinental Exchange, the company behind the New York Stock Exchange, revealed a strategic stake in OKX at a $25 billion valuation. The deal comes with plans to launch tokenized stocks and crypto futures, tapping OKX’s 120 million users.
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Wall Street Wants the Crypto Trading Crowd
As @CryptosR_Us noted on X, this is the $126 trillion stock market going on-chain. The logic is simple. The current system is slow. Blockchain changes that. 24/7 trading, instant settlement, global access, the post put it plainly.
And the idea is catching on fast. Antoine Scalia, founder and CEO of Cryptio, told CoinDesk that traditional finance and crypto merging was once a crypto-native narrative. Now the major exchanges are moving. “That’s a realization that eventually all assets will settle on blockchain rails,” Scalia said.
The SEC gave this a legal push too. A January staff statement finally clarified that tokenized equities carry the same legal weight as conventional shares. That cleared the path for incumbents to enter the space with real confidence.
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The “Frenemy” Nobody Saw Coming
Traditional exchanges want access to crypto-native traders. Crypto platforms want the reach and credibility that established financial names bring. Neither side can fully get there without the other. Scalia called it a “frenemy” dynamic, frictions and complementarity running at the same time.
The tokenized equity market sits at $1 billion today. That sounds small. But it has tripled since mid-2025, data from RWA.xyz shows, as Kraken, Ondo Finance, Robinhood and others rolled out token versions of equities.
A joint report by Boston Consulting Group and Ripple put a number on where this heads. Tokenized assets could grow at 53% annually, reaching $18.9 trillion across all asset classes by 2033.
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Liquidity Is the Piece That Changes Everything
Yuki Yuminaga, founder of tokenization startup Tenbin Labs, pointed to continuous price discovery as the biggest win. Traditional stock markets close. Blockchain-based assets don’t. That alone unlocks more capital and potentially reduces volatility.
Tokenized shares could also work as collateral in DeFi lending markets. That opens up capital efficiency plays that the current system simply can’t support.
But liquidity has been the persistent gap, Yuminaga told CoinDesk. Onchain and traditional markets have run separately. If Nasdaq connects those two pools, that shifts the entire equation.
The $126 trillion number is the prize. Both Wall Street and crypto firms know it. How the split shakes out is still the open question.
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