Current Affairs

Kraken parent expands tokenized stocks to Hong Kong, UK and South Korea equities

2026-07-22

Kraken's parent company Payward is pushing its tokenized stock platform xStocks well beyond American equities, partnering with investment infrastructure provider GTN to bring Hong Kong-listed shares onchain first, with the U.K., Europe and South Korea slated to follow pending regulatory sign-off. The move signals that the roughly year-old race to put stock markets on blockchain rails is entering a new phase — one focused less on replicating the S&P 500 and more on giving global retail traders access to equities they currently can't easily reach.

The partnership, announced July 22, was confirmed in a joint press release from GTN and Payward. GTN, the fintech powering limitless investment, and Payward, the developer of the xStocks tokenised equities framework and parent company of Kraken, have partnered to enhance and accelerate the global expansion of the xStocks offering. The partnership unlocks a pathway for xStocks to significantly scale the range of equities it tokenises, beginning by tokenising equities listed in Hong Kong.

Mark Greenberg, global head of Payward Services, framed the expansion as an assault on the geographic fragmentation of capital markets. "For decades, we've accepted that capital markets should be fragmented by country, currency, and market hours," said Mark Greenberg, Global Head of Payward Services. "That's a legacy financial infrastructure problem. The biggest asset class that hasn't been tokenized yet is the rest of the world, and our partnership with GTN is about changing that." "One asset at a time, we're bringing truly global capital markets onchain until geography becomes irrelevant to investing," he added.

GTN's own leadership pitched the deal as a plug-and-play expansion for financial institutions. "Financial institutions want to move into new asset classes and markets without rebuilding their technology. Our infrastructure lets partners like Payward launch quickly across 90+ markets and a full range of instruments, and it includes the sub-accounting" needed for institutional rollout. GTN will handle execution, custody and recordkeeping for the underlying shares, and — pending licensing — plans to extend xStocks products to its own institutional client base.

The GTN tie-up builds on a rapid buildout for xStocks since its debut. The framework launched in May 2025 as a joint effort between Kraken and Backed Finance, initially offering tokenized versions of roughly 60 U.S. stocks and ETFs such as Tesla, Apple and Nvidia, issued as SPL tokens on Solana and tradable around the clock outside the U.S. By March 2026, Payward said the product had already surpassed $25 billion in total transaction volume since launching less than a year ago (including more than $4 billion settled on-chain) with over 85,000 unique holders across supported networks. Payward has since layered on additional features, including tokenized access to U.S. IPO allocations for retail investors in markets such as Medellín, Madrid and Malaysia, and a pre-IPO offering tied to Bending Spoons ahead of its Nasdaq listing.

The international push arrives amid an intensifying scramble among crypto exchanges and Wall Street infrastructure players to own the tokenized-equities rail. Robinhood went furthest into decentralized infrastructure on July 1, launching its own Arbitrum-based Robinhood Chain and Stock Tokens — debt securities issued by a Jersey subsidiary — covering over 200 US stocks and ETFs and available in more than 120 jurisdictions. Coinbase, meanwhile, has said its planned tokenized stocks will differ structurally from Robinhood's derivative model: Coinbase announced in June that its planned tokenized stocks for non-U.S. customers would represent actual equity ownership, include dividend payments, and carry one-for-one backing from the underlying asset. Base founder Jesse Pollak said on July 21 that Coinbase's Base network is close to launching a similar 1:1-backed product.

Traditional market infrastructure is moving in parallel. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation has been preparing tokenized-securities pilots, while Nasdaq and NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange have launched their own initiatives. Wall Street's growing interest reflects forecasts like Citi's, which projected in a June report that the global tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030 in a base case scenario, with a bear case of $2.7 trillion and a bull case of $8.2 trillion, with equities alone accounting for a significant share of that growth.

For xStocks, expanding beyond U.S. tickers into Hong Kong, U.K. and South Korean markets gives global retail traders — many already drawn to Asian companies tied to the AI supply chain — a broader menu of tokenized assets than rivals currently offer. Whether that first-mover advantage in non-U.S. equities holds will likely depend on how quickly Coinbase, Robinhood and traditional exchanges can match the geographic reach that Payward and GTN are now racing to build.

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