Why the Next Asset Class for xStocks to Tokenize Is the Rest of the World

For its first year, an xStocks token largely meant one thing: tokenized exposure to a U.S. stock or ETF, permissionless and tradeable onchain, and backed 1:1 by the underlying assets. That was deliberate. We started with the deepest, most liquid equity markets in the world and proved the model worked. Now there are more than 500 listed xStocks, over $35 billion in volume, and nearly 200,000 holders across the world.

While tokenizing U.S. equities was the starting point, it was never the finish line. The world's markets don't stop at the U.S. border or during U.S. trading hours, and neither should the tokenized assets you can hold onchain.

Today marks the start of the next phase of this expansion. xStocks is taking a tangible step to move beyond tokenized representations of U.S. equities for the first time, opening the framework to equities listed in international markets, starting with tokenizing equities listed in Hong Kong and extending to further markets over time. It's the beginning of a simple but significant shift: from tokenizing one country's market to tokenizing the world's.

Why the world stayed fragmented

Holding equities from more than one country has always been harder than it should be. A stock listed in one country trades in specific windows, and in that local currency, through local infrastructure. Wanting both often has meant separate brokers, separate settlement systems, separate rules, and a stack of intermediaries in between. Most people treat that friction as a fact of life.

It isn't. It's a consequence of how the old infrastructure was built, one market at a time, with no reason to talk to the others. Tokenization changes the premise. When an equity becomes an onchain token, the border stops mattering. It settles the same way, moves the same way, and lives in the same wallet as every other asset you hold, wherever in the world it was originally listed.

What this means if you hold xStocks

The change is easy to feel. Hold a tokenized U.S. stock and a tokenized Hong Kong equity side by side, with more markets to come. All of it lives onchain, trades 24/7 (in select geographic regions), and moves freely across the 100-plus exchanges, wallets, and DeFi applications where xStocks already trades.

No separate account for each market. No waiting for a foreign exchange to open. Just a wider world of assets, reachable from one place, on your terms. As always, what you do with that access is entirely your decision.

What this means for xStocks Alliance members

For the platforms building on xStocks, the most important thing about this expansion is what doesn't change. The foundation of the asset class stays exactly as it is: the same 1:1 backing, the same onchain settlement, the same interoperability and composability your users already rely on. You don't re-integrate, re-architect, or rebuild anything.

What changes is what you can offer. The same integration that gives your users tokenized U.S. equities today will give them a steadily widening range of international markets, and eventually asset classes beyond equities. Breadth becomes something you can offer your users by default, not a roadmap you have to build toward. In a market where depth of assets is the differentiator, that's the whole point.

The engine supporting this expansion

Expanding across international markets takes plumbing most people never see, and that's where GTN comes in. Through a single integration, GTN reaches a wide range of asset classes across more than 90 markets, provides the global execution and custody for the traditional assets that underpin the expanded list of xStocks, and supplies the ledgering and record-keeping that lets those assets be accurately accounted for onchain. It's what makes scaling xStocks beyond U.S. equities possible, and possible at pace.

The partnership is already live. Distribution of tokenized assets to GTN's institutional clients will follow once the required licenses are in place, subject to regulatory approval in each market.

The work ahead

Tokenization's promise was never to put one market onchain. It was to make the world's markets reachable from a single place. The majority of the world's assets haven’t yet been tokenized, and that’s something we’re determined to change.

Closing that gap is the work ahead, and moving beyond U.S. equities is the most meaningful step we've taken into it. Tokenized representations of Hong Kong listed equities will be live this week, with tokenized assets from the UK, European Union and South Korea to follow in the weeks ahead.

This announcement is for informational purposes only. It is not investment, legal or tax advice, and it is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security, token or other financial instrument. xStocks are issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited (a Jersey private limited company) and offered to eligible Kraken customers via Payward Digital Solutions Ltd. (“PDSL”), a company licensed to conduct digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, and to eligible EU customers via Payward Europe Digital Solutions Ltd., a company authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. xStocks are not offered or available in the United States or to U.S. persons, and other geographic restrictions apply. xStocks are not, nor will they be registered with any local securities regulators. The availability of products and services varies by jurisdiction and is subject to local regulatory requirements and approvals. GTN's provision of any services described is subject to GTN obtaining the relevant regulatory licences in each market. Tokenized and cryptoasset products carry significant risk, including the risk of total loss, may be unregulated, and may not be covered by statutory compensation schemes; the value of investments can go down as well as up. Read Kraken’s xStocks Risk Disclosure at kraken.com/legal/xstocks as well as the Base Prospectus and related Final Terms for xStocks at https://assets.backed.fi/legal-documentation to learn more. This announcement contains forward-looking statements that reflect current expectations and are subject to change, including as a result of regulatory, market and technological developments. GTN and Payward undertake no obligation to update them.