Kraken is expanding retail investor access to Jersey Mike’s planned initial public offering through two distinct structures, combining traditional share allocations for eligible U.S. customers with a tokenized stock product for international users across more than 110 countries. The move comes as the tokenized equity market surges, with on-chain transfer volume hitting $9.22 billion in a single month and Solana dominating 95% of global tokenized stock trading.
Eligible U.S. investors can request book-entry shares at the IPO price directly through Kraken, while international customers can request JMKEx – a tokenized version of Jersey Mike’s stock backed on a one-to-one basis by underlying shares held with a regulated custodian. The sandwich chain, which operates more than 3,300 locations, expects to price its Class A shares between $21 and $25 and list them on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker JMKE.
However, submitting a request does not guarantee an allocation. The IPO underwriter determines how many shares each participant receives, leaving Kraken dependent on the number of shares it can secure. This structure exposed a central weakness during Kraken’s previous tokenized IPO for SpaceX in June, when demand was more than four times oversubscribed and several exchanges—including Binance, Bybit, and MEXC—canceled their tokenized campaigns and refunded customers after failing to obtain enough underlying shares.
The JMKEx token is designed to make public equity accessible through crypto trading infrastructure rather than traditional brokerage accounts. Once the IPO closes, the tokens are expected to trade 24 hours a day, five days a week on Kraken and participating xStocks Alliance platforms, compared with regular U.S. market hours for the underlying shares. The tokens can be transferred between alliance platforms, moved onchain, and used with compatible decentralized finance applications, potentially enabling lending, collateral, or other financial uses.
But the token is not the same instrument as the NYSE-listed share. Its value depends on the issuer maintaining one-to-one backing and preserving a reliable process between the token and the traditional market. Different trading hours may create temporary price gaps, and the token holders face issuer and custody risk that traditional shareholders do not.
The broader tokenized stock market has grown rapidly from less than $500 million in mid-2025 to about $1.87 billion in distributed value, fueled by investors outside the U.S. seeking exposure without domestic brokerage accounts. Solana handles the vast majority of this volume, with single-day records around $644 million. Institutional infrastructure is also evolving: Securitize tokenized $295 million of its own stock on Solana on its NYSE debut day, and Moody’s has launched credit ratings for tokenized assets.
Still, the SpaceX episode serves as a cautionary tale. The share price fell from its $135 IPO price to about $115, highlighting that access to an oversubscribed IPO does not ensure gains once open-market trading begins. Investors in the Jersey Mike’s offering must wait for final allocations before treating requested JMKEx as completed exposure.
