Kraken parent Payward added more than 200 UK and EU tokenized stocks to xStocks, taking it past 1,500 products with Hong Kong next. Plus: the two-person Zug firm named security agent for $1.29 billion of tokens.
Tokenized stocks are having a good month in a bad market. Bitcoin price traded near $74,200 at press time, down 6.7% over seven days and 10.4% over 30 days, with most of the top ten in the red since the mid-short term.
Tokenized equities, meanwhile, cleared $3.9 billion in October volume on Solana alone. Securitize doubled its list to 25 US names. While on Tuesday, Kraken's parent took the biggest single step yet outside the US market.
Payward announced that it has added more than 200 tokenized stocks of UK- and EU-listed companies through xStocks, taking the total number of products above 1,500. Each token is backed one for one by shares held at a regulated custodian and trades on Kraken and the xStocks Alliance platforms. Hundreds of Hong Kong stocks are scheduled to follow in the coming weeks.
The expansion is real progress. It also lands the same day an on-chain researcher pointed out something most buyers of these tokens have never checked: who actually holds the claim on the shares if the issuer fails. For more than a quarter of the market, the answer is a two-person company in Zug.
The new batch brings European blue chips onchain for the first time at scale. SAP, Siemens and Allianz from the DAX 40 are among the more than 200 names, issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited in Jersey and offered through Payward Digital Solutions under its Bermuda Monetary Authority licence. The tokens live on Solana, Ethereum, TON, Ink and X Layer, among other chains.
It is the first delivery under Payward's July partnership with GTN, the brokerage and custody group that runs six regulated entities across more than 90 markets. GTN buys and holds the underlying shares; Backed issues the tokens against them. Hong Kong-listed equities, which the July announcement named as the first international market, now follow the European batch rather than lead it.
"A portfolio should not have borders or trading hours," Mark Greenberg, Payward's chief commercial officer, said in the announcement. "Over 200 UK and European listings onchain today is proof it works."
The numbers behind the product have grown quickly. xStocks holds over $1.1 billion in assets, up from about $225 million in February, with more than 550,000 unique holders and over $45 billion in cumulative transaction volume, according to Payward. The average holding is roughly $2,000, which says who is buying: retail, in size, outside the US.
The restrictions have not moved. xStocks remain unavailable to UK investors, to users located in the United States and to US persons. So a product that just listed 200 British and European companies cannot be bought by anyone in Britain, a quirk of how the tokens are issued rather than where the companies trade.
It’s important to understand that most tokenized stocks are not shares. They are a claim on real shares sitting at a broker, and the claim is held on your behalf by a security agent, the firm that takes control of the shares and sells them if the issuer goes bust.
On-chain researcher Stein RWA mapped who that agent is for each issuer, using Token Terminal values as of 10 November and the issuers' own prospectuses.
For xStocks ($1.11 billion of tokens) and Robinhood's European stock tokens ($175 million), it is the same company: Security Agent Services AG, at Baarerstrasse 75 in Zug. It is named to protect $1.29 billion of tokenized stocks, about 26% of the market. For Robinhood it also checks that the shares are really there.
"Robinhood and xStocks fight over the same traders, but if either one collapses tomorrow, the same company shows up to deal with it," Stein RWA wrote on X. If an issuer fails, the agent takes control of the shares, sells them, takes its own fees first, and pays holders what is left.
The rest of the market splits three ways. Ondo's $1.40 billion names Ankura Trust in Connecticut as agent, another 29%. Binance's bStocks ($1.51 billion) and Coinbase's product ($46 million) name no security agent at all; the issuer holds the shares on trust, which covers 32% of the market. Securitize's $277 million needs no agent because holders sit on the company register as real shareholders, the model it used for its 25 US names on Solana.
Notably, none of this is a claim of wrongdoing. A security agent with a small balance sheet is normal in structured finance, and its job is procedural. The point is concentration: two rival products, $1.29 billion, one firm, and a holder base of 550,000 people with $2,000 each who mostly do not know its name.
Three things can happen from here. First, the Hong Kong launch, which would make xStocks the first tokenized product to span US, European and Asian equities, and test whether GTN's custody chain holds up across three time zones.
Second, whether the UK restriction lifts: the London Stock Exchange has said tokenization "must develop in a way that preserves the trust, rights and role of regulated markets," and Payward has an LSE tie-up in progress, so British access is still a regulatory question.
Third, the agent question. As tokenized stocks approach $5 billion, expect issuers to be asked who their security agent is, how it is capitalized, and what happens on a Sunday night when a token depegs and the agent's office is closed.
In the bullish scenario, that scrutiny produces bigger agents and clearer disclosure and the product keeps compounding at the pace of the last nine months. That said, in a bearish scenario, the first issuer failure arrives before the disclosure does, and 550,000 holders learn what a security agent is the hard way.
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