Four markets are now in Kraken's sights. Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has signed a partnership with fintech firm GTN to extend its xStocks tokenized equity product beyond U.S. listings, opening access to shares from Hong Kong first, with the UK, South Korea, and additional European countries to follow in subsequent rollout phases.
xStocks is Kraken's infrastructure for issuing blockchain-based tokens that track the price of real company shares, letting crypto-native users hold equity exposure without going through a traditional brokerage. The GTN tie-up is the mechanism that makes international market access possible, since GTN holds the regulatory connections and market infrastructure across those jurisdictions that Kraken currently lacks on its own.
Hong Kong leads the queue, which is notable given the city's position as a gateway to mainland Chinese capital flows and its own growing appetite for dollar-linked digital assets. The sequencing toward South Korea and Europe suggests Kraken is targeting retail-heavy crypto markets where users already hold significant on-chain assets but have limited access to global equities through conventional channels.
No launch dates for individual markets were disclosed. Kraken has not specified which international stocks will be tokenized first or whether the xStocks tokens will carry the same 24/7 trading window that the existing U.S.-stock versions offer.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
