Kraken exec says tokenized stocks will let you ‘buy coffee with Tesla’

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is taking a big swing at the emerging market for tokenized equities, launching a product it calls xStocks — 24/7, permissionless, and non-custodial tokenized stocks available worldwide.

“First, so xStocks are tokenized stocks. They're 24-7, non-custodial, permissionless, available anywhere. And we've launched a few months ago the first 60 of them, offering them on the Kraken platform through much of the world and hopefully in Europe soon,” said Mark Greenberg, Vice President and General Manager, Consumer Product and Business at Kraken in a conversation with Scott Melker on The Street Roundtable.

Currently, the product is available in Kraken’s “rest of world” markets, spanning Latin America, most of Asia, and the Middle East. “Over time, we hope to offer them, as I said, in Europe as well. We'll hopefully be able to do that in the next few weeks,” Greenberg said.

Join the discussion with Scott Melker on Roundtable here.

The appeal is clear for markets with limited equity access. “Even as a Canadian, I don't have a lot of access to certain equity. So I was trying to buy an equity adjunct in Europe the other day and turns out actually my broker doesn't even allow that. What we're planning to do here with xStocks is allow folks around the world to buy stocks in everything… not everybody can buy especially fractional components of that if they only have say 10 or 20 dollars that they want to put into something like Tesla.”

The infrastructure is fully backed. “The stocks are held one to one backed in a SPV, a special purpose vehicle in Jersey. And then they are… minted into tokens through a prospectus in Europe and then offered. And so basically every time you mint one of these tokens, a share is bought and then those tokens can be sold, bought or sold on Kraken or on Dex's or on lots of other exchanges.”

Greenberg contrasted Kraken’s approach with more limited tokenized offerings from big institutions. “A lot of these early things, right? Like you could only buy and sell it back to the issuer… You couldn't even send it to yourself somewhere else… that's actually what we were trying to avoid… And for sure, xStocks, I think, is at the forefront of that.”

Kraken also plans to integrate tokenized stocks with traditional equities and everyday spending.

“Soon we're going to be launching a card in Europe and the UK… if you want to hold your… money in Tesla… you can absolutely do that. And then you can buy your coffee with it… you can do that with Tesla or Fartcoin or USDC.”

The card launch, Greenberg added, is “hoping just a few weeks away, actually for our launch in Europe.”

Tokenized market surges

As per RWA.XYZ, a data tracker for tokenized real-world assets, the market for tokenized stocks is showing steady growth.

The sector’s total value currently stands at $391.70 million, up 0.30% from 30 days ago. Monthly transfer volume has surged 34.01% to $314.69 million, indicating heightened trading activity. The number of monthly active addresses is 53,194, up 1.57%, while the total number of holders has climbed 14.90% to 61,160, signaling expanding adoption across global markets.

The largest tokenized equity by value is EXOD (Exodus Movement Inc. Class A), issued via Securitize on the Algorand network, with a market value of $281.6 million and an 83.72% share of the tracked total.

Other notable assets include TSLAx (Tesla Inc.) on Solana with $9.93 million in value, up 102.9% over the past month, and MSTRx (MicroStrategy Inc.) at $4.26 million, up 56.53%. Traditional market heavyweights like SPYx (S&P 500 ETF), NVDAx (NVIDIA Corp), and AAPLx (Apple Inc.) also feature prominently, reflecting investor interest in blue-chip tokenized equities.