Kraken's Payward Partners With SoFi as Standard Chartered Launches UAE Crypto Trading

Kraken parent company Payward has deepened its push into traditional finance through a new partnership with US digital bank SoFi, bringing the SoFiUSD stablecoin onto Kraken's platform and connecting Payward to the SoFi Exchange Network. Under the deal, Kraken's institutional and business clients gain access to 24/7 US dollar settlement, while SoFi will leverage Kraken Prime for additional digital asset liquidity and may add qualified custody services at a later stage. The agreement follows other recent Payward moves beyond core crypto, including a reported partnership with London Stock Exchange Group to offer tokenized UK stocks through the planned LSE 24 venue, expected to launch in 2027, and Kraken's acquisition of tokenization platform Backed Finance and its xStocks equity product.

In a parallel development, Standard Chartered has become the first global bank to offer institutional spot Bitcoin and Ether trading in the United Arab Emirates. The London-headquartered multinational, operating through an entity regulated by the Dubai International Financial Centre, is also the first Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) to provide such a service. Eligible institutional clients can now access spot BTC and ETH trading via Standard Chartered's existing electronic trading channels, extending the bank's regulated digital asset footprint in the region, which already includes custody services launched in September 2024 and a June banking agreement with crypto exchange CoinMENA.

Meanwhile, Hyperscale Data has shut down Bitcoin mining operations at its Michigan facility as it repositions the site for AI infrastructure. The transition reflects a broader trend of crypto-linked firms pivoting compute capacity toward artificial intelligence workloads, where demand and margins have surged. Earlier this week, the company announced plans to allocate roughly $1.5 billion to the conversion, signaling one of the largest single-site repurposing efforts by a publicly traded crypto mining operator to date.