US-based crypto trade Kraken has agreed to purchase Backed Finance AG, the corporate behind the issuance of xStocks, including to a string of acquisitions the trade has made this yr whereas bringing the tokenized-equities platform beneath its roof.
According to Tuesday’s announcement, Kraken plans to combine xStocks’ issuance, buying and selling and settlement extra tightly into its merchandise, together with its international cash app, whereas increasing help to extra blockchains and markets.
XStocks is a platform that points tokenized variations of publicly traded equities, akin to shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It presently gives over 60 tokenized merchandise and has recorded greater than $10 billion in mixed trade and onchain quantity since launching earlier this yr.
The tokenized belongings are reside on the Solana and Ethereum blockchains, with buying and selling out there 24/7 onchain. They could be self-custodied and used throughout a number of networks, in accordance to xStocks.
The acquisition comes after Kraken rolled out Backed’s xStocks product to eligible European customers in September.
Kraken additionally operates the xStocks Alliance, a community of partnered chains and buying and selling venues. Kraken mentioned the acquisition will consolidate that community and help broader interoperability and liquidity as extra markets add tokenized equities. The corporations didn’t disclose the phrases of the deal.
Kraken, which submitted a confidential US IPO filing in November, has been energetic on the acquisition entrance this yr. In May, it acquired NinjaTrader, adopted by the proprietary trading platform Breakout in September, and Small Exchange, a chosen contract market, in October.
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Tokenized equities achieve traction throughout main platforms
The rise of tokenized equities, digital tokens that characterize possession of conventional shares on a blockchain, has turn out to be one of many yr’s most distinguished crypto traits.
In June, xStocks launched on Bybit, Kraken and a number of other Solana-based DeFi platforms. The lineup consisted of tokenized versions of blue-chip stocks, together with Netflix, Meta, Coinbase, Amazon, Nvidia, McDonald’s, Apple, Tesla and Microsoft.
That similar month, international buying and selling platform Robinhood launched a layer-2 blockchain on Arbitrum and rolled out tokenized stock trading for European Union users. The platform debuted with greater than 200 US inventory and ETF tokens, tradeable 24/5 with no fee.
According to Dune Analytics data, Robinhood has 943 tokenized shares and ETFs reside on Arbitrum, with a complete onchain worth of about $10.8 million.
RWA.xyz individually tracks roughly $656 million in regulated tokenized public shares, with $1.14 billion in month-to-month switch quantity and about 118,000 holders. Among regulated issuers, Ondo holds about 52% of the market, adopted by Backed Finance at 24% and Securitize at 20%.
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