Payward, the parent company of Kraken, said it will soon open tokenized access to U.S.-listed IPOs for customers of Kraken and other xStocks Alliance members. The structure is designed to let eligible investors receive allocations at the offering price, instead of buying shares only after public trading starts.
The company said the first tokenized IPO offerings are expected to go live through Kraken and other alliance platforms in the coming weeks. The timing arrives as investors watch for a fresh group of closely followed public listings. SpaceX, along with AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI, is widely seen as part of the pool of possible IPO candidates over the next few months, keeping demand for early access high.
How the tokenized IPO model would work
Under Payward’s plan, investors would submit non-binding indications of interest before an IPO. Payward would then aggregate demand across participating exchanges and work with underwriting syndicates to obtain allocations. After the company lists, the shares would be tokenized and distributed through participating platforms, with each tokenized share backed one-for-one by the underlying stock held by a regulated custodian.
A Payward spokesperson told CoinDesk that the firm will only offer IPOs where it has actually secured allocations for investors. That means availability will depend on real allotments rather than a blanket listing of every upcoming deal.
Part of a broader tokenization push in capital markets
The initiative sits inside Payward’s wider effort to use blockchain infrastructure to widen access to capital markets. Tokenization has become one of the fastest-growing segments in digital assets, expanding well beyond cryptocurrencies into Treasury funds, private credit, money-market products and equities.
Backers of tokenization say the format can make assets easier to access, transfer and trade across jurisdictions. In equities, that could reduce some of the geographic and brokerage barriers that have long limited participation in IPOs and in stocks listed outside an investor’s home market.
IPO risk remains even with blockchain rails
Payward also pointed to the familiar risks of pre-IPO investing. Oversubscription is common, allocations are not guaranteed, the offering price can shift during the book-building process, and newly listed shares often see sharp moves once public trading begins. Tokenization may change access, but it does not remove the core risks tied to IPO investing.
The company added that its xStocks framework already supports tokenized equities backed one-for-one by shares held in custody. According to Payward, the framework has processed more than $30 billion in transaction volume and over $6 billion in onchain settlements across more than 125,000 holders.