Kraken Parent Payward Partners With GTN to Push xStocks Beyond the US

Payward, the parent company of exchange Kraken, has partnered with fintech firm GTN to expand xStocks — blockchain-based tokens that track real company shares — into markets outside the United States. The rollout is set to begin in Hong Kong before extending to the United Kingdom, continental Europe and South Korea.

What is changing

xStocks are tokenized equities that mirror the price of publicly listed shares, allowing holders to gain exposure on-chain without directly owning the underlying stock through a traditional brokerage. Until now, the product’s reach has been largely tied to the US equity market. The Payward-GTN partnership marks a deliberate push to internationalize the offering across four new jurisdictions.

Both companies confirmed the tie-up, with the expansion sequence starting in Hong Kong and then moving to the UK, Europe and South Korea. Neither firm disclosed a specific product launch date, trading volumes, or the initial size of the equity basket to be tokenized.

Why the geography matters

The chosen markets — Hong Kong, the UK, Europe and South Korea — represent regions where regulators have shown varying degrees of openness to tokenized securities, in contrast to the more restrictive stance in the US, where retail access to tokenized equities has faced regulatory friction. Building out xStocks abroad first lets Payward and GTN test demand and compliance frameworks in jurisdictions that may move faster on digital-asset rules than American regulators.

It also puts Payward’s tokenized-equity ambitions in direct competition with other blockchain platforms chasing the same market. Coinbase’s Base network, for instance, has separately outlined plans for tokenized stocks with 1:1 backing that explicitly exclude US users, underscoring how issuers across the industry are treating non-US markets as the near-term proving ground for tokenized securities.

What it means for holders and traders

For crypto-native investors, the expansion signals that tokenized real-world assets — a category that already spans tokenized Treasuries, gold and money-market products — are extending further into equities on a genuinely international footprint rather than staying US-centric. If GTN’s distribution network delivers meaningful uptake in Hong Kong, the UK, Europe or South Korea, it could pressure US regulators to clarify rules for tokenized stocks domestically, where demand has so far been constrained by compliance uncertainty.

No pricing, market-cap or trading-volume figures for the international xStocks rollout have been published yet, and both companies have kept launch timing undisclosed. Investors watching the tokenized-equity sector will need to track the first live trading data out of Hong Kong to gauge whether the expansion generates real liquidity or remains a limited pilot.

Read more: Coinbase’s Base Plots Tokenized Stocks With 1:1 Backing, Excludes US Users

Sources

• decrypt.co
• theblock.co