Deutsche Börse Buys $200M Stake in Kraken Parent Payward Ahead of Potential U.S. Listing - Crypto Economy

The investment formalizes and deepens a partnership announced in December 2025, under which Kraken would be integrated with 360T, Deutsche Börse's foreign exchange trading platform. The goal of both companies is to build a unified infrastructure for institutional clients that operates across both traditional and crypto assets, without the need to maintain parallel systems.

Thomas Book, member of the Deutsche Börse executive board, summed up the alliance's vision: "We want to create an integrated value chain, regardless of whether the asset is tokenized or fully digital." Direct institutional participation in the crypto industry continues to deepen. This year also saw the disclosure of an approximately $200 million investment by the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, in the exchange OKX, valued at the time at $25 billion.

Kraken, one of the world's oldest crypto exchanges, reported $2.2 billion in adjusted revenue during 2025, growth the company attributed to an expansion beyond spot trading and into a broader range of financial services. In March, Kraken became the first crypto company to gain access to the Federal Reserve's core payment system, a milestone that underscores the advancing integration between digital finance and the traditional financial system.