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

Payward, the parent company of Kraken, is expanding its xStocks tokenized equity platform to include international markets beyond the United States. Through a strategic partnership with investment infrastructure provider GTN, the firm plans to offer Hong Kong-listed stocks, with U.K., European, and South Korean equities expected to follow pending regulatory approval. This expansion aims to capture global demand for onchain access to diverse equities, particularly Asian firms involved in the AI supply chain. Since its inception last year, xStocks has supported over 500 tokenized securities, facilitating more than $35 billion in trading volume for nearly 200,000 holders. The initiative highlights a broader industry shift as crypto firms and traditional financial institutions race to bring global stock trading onchain to improve settlement speeds and market efficiency. By leveraging GTN’s connectivity to over 90 global markets, Payward seeks to move beyond the current focus on U.S.-centric assets. This development underscores the growing institutional conviction that tokenization will fundamentally upgrade capital markets, with Citi projecting a $5.5 trillion market for tokenized securities by 2030.