Kraken is progressing toward the acquisition of Backed Finance AG, with the objective of drawing tokenized stocks further into the universal financial establishment.
Backed Set to Join Kraken as Global Tokenized Stock Demand Rises
A formal agreement has been reached by Kraken to procure Backed Finance AG, the entity responsible for issuing xStocks, in a transaction primarily intended to hasten the proliferation of tokenized shares while simultaneously solidifying the organization’s dominance over the entire niche.
As articulated by Kraken, the initiative represents a more extensive endeavor directed toward rendering capital markets more transparent, mutually functional, and geographically unrestricted — a formidable corporate declaration for an industry whose function within legacy finance is still being determined. The corporation affirmed that Backed’s xStocks platform has amplified rapidly subsequent to its introduction during the initial part of 2025.
The offering purportedly exceeded $10 billion in aggregated exchange and on-chain transactional turnover within a span of half a year, thereby affording Kraken a potent justification to incorporate the issuing entity directly into its operational structure. The organization announced that Backed is now provided with the requisite fiscal resources and technical framework for expansion, particularly as institutional deliberation concerning tokenized securities persistently accumulates.
The centralized trading venue, Kraken, intends to consolidate the processes of issuance, commerce, and finalization within a solitary structure — an endeavor purposed to rationalize what historically has represented a convoluted nexus of intermediaries. Senior leaders contend that combining all these functionalities beneath one organization can bolster the clarity and dependability throughout tokenized financial environments.
“Integrating Backed into Kraken strengthens the core architecture required for open and programmable capital markets,”
Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi explained.
Presently, xStocks grants patrons entry to over sixty tokenized stocks and Exchange-Traded Funds, each being supported 1:1 by foundational investments and operational upon Solana and Ethereum, with supplementary blockchain protocols impending. The platform facilitates round-the-clock commercial activity on Kraken or directly on the distributed ledger, thus providing an adaptable conduit between conventional and digital financial environments.
Kraken articulated its anticipation that xStocks will also be integrated into its more extensive range of services, encompassing its worldwide currency application, thereby permitting patrons to possess or disburse tokenized stocks. Backed’s personnel will matriculate into Kraken, reinforcing the architecture for issuance and adherence as the corporation seeks to propagate tokenized holdings beyond common shares.
Adam Levi, co-founder of Backed, denominated the procurement a prospect to expedite a conceptualization established since 2021: specifically, a regulatory compliant conduit between digital assets and conventional finance (TradFi). The transaction was characterized by Kraken as an element within a sequence of deliberate purchases — which includes Breakout, Small Exchange, and Ninjatrader — that sustain its holistically incorporated platform for safekeeping, reconciliation, finalization, and market intelligence.
The corporation terminated its statement by declaring its conviction that this configuration affords it a competitive advantage in deploying novel real-world assets (RWAs) on unrestricted, universally available infrastructural channels.
