Payward, Kraken’s parent company, said on July 22 that it is expanding the reach of its tokenized stock platform xStocks from the U.S. equity market to Hong Kong, the UK, South Korea and other international stock markets.
The company said it is working with investment infrastructure provider GTN to bring Hong Kong-listed stocks to xStocks. It also plans to support stocks from the UK, Europe and South Korea after receiving regulatory approval. Payward said the partnership also creates a base for future expansion into other tokenized asset classes.
xStocks widens its international equity plan
Mark Greenberg, Payward’s global head of consumer, said major markets outside the U.S. remain an important asset category that has not yet been tokenized, and that the company wants to bring global capital markets on-chain step by step through xStocks.
xStocks has previously focused on on-chain versions of U.S. stocks and ETFs, including widely traded names such as Nvidia, Apple and Tesla. According to Payward, the platform now supports more than 500 tokenized securities, has recorded more than $35 billion in cumulative trading volume, and has close to 200,000 holders. The products are still not available to U.S. users.
Competition in tokenized securities is heating up
The expansion comes as competition in tokenized securities intensifies. Robinhood, Coinbase, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are among the institutions pushing ahead with efforts to bring equities on-chain.
Citi previously projected that the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, with tokenized equities accounting for about $2.6 trillion.