Kraken parent bringing tokenized equities beyond U.S. through GTN partnership
Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, is expanding its xStocks tokenized stock platform to Hong Kong, the U.K., South Korea and other markets through a partnership with investment infrastructure provider GTN, subject to regulatory approvals.
The expansion marks the first major push by a tokenized equity platform beyond U.S. markets. xStocks currently supports 500 tokenized securities and has processed $35 billion in trading volume across 200,000 holders since launching last year with tokenized U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds.
GTN will provide execution, custody and recordkeeping for securities backing the tokens. The infrastructure provider connects to 90 global markets and plans to offer xStocks products to its institutional clients pending regulatory sign-off.
Mark Greenberg, global head of Payward Services, framed the expansion in geographic terms. “The biggest asset class that hasn’t been tokenized yet is the rest of the world. One asset at a time, we’re bringing truly global capital markets onchain until geography becomes irrelevant to investing,” Greenberg said.
xStocks uses a third-party custody model: GTN and other partners purchase and hold traditional shares before minting corresponding tokens on blockchain. This approach differs from an emerging industry debate over whether tokenized securities should be issued natively on blockchain networks to bypass intermediaries entirely.
The tokenized equities sector has remained concentrated on U.S. markets, with platforms offering blockchain versions of stocks like Nvidia, Apple and Tesla. Competitors including Robinhood and Coinbase have also moved into tokenized stock offerings. Robinhood expanded its tokenized stock offering beyond European users earlier this month.
Citi estimates the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, with tokenized equities comprising $2.6 trillion of that total. xStocks products currently remain unavailable to U.S. investors.
