Kraken's parent company, Payward, has announced a major expansion of its xStocks platform, moving beyond U.S. equities to tokenize stocks from Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Europe, and South Korea, subject to regulatory approvals. This comes shortly after the initial launch of xStocks, which debuted on the Solana blockchain with 60 tokenized U.S. equities and ETFs. The platform now boasts nearly 500 tokenized securities, over $35 billion in trading volume, and nearly 200,000 holders, according to a widely shared post by Jesse Powell.
The global push is enabled through a partnership with GTN, a market infrastructure provider that connects to over 90 global financial markets and will handle execution, custody, and recordkeeping for the underlying securities. Payward also plans to extend tokenization into commodities, pre-IPO investments, and institutional execution tools, alongside collateral support and enhanced around-the-clock liquidity. The move aligns with a broader industry push: Robinhood, Coinbase, DTCC, Nasdaq, and the NYSE are all advancing similar tokenization projects, and Citi forecasts the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, with tokenized equities alone hitting $2.6 trillion.
The expansion significantly deepens the bridge between traditional finance and blockchain, positioning Solana as a key infrastructure layer for tokenized assets. As Kraken scales its xStocks ecosystem, the crypto market stands to benefit from increased institutional interest and on-chain trading activity.
