Kraken Announces Deal to Purchase Tokenization Firm Backed Finance
Leading crypto exchange Kraken has agreed to acquire Backed Finance, the issuer responsible for its xStocks tokenized assets. This acquisition marks a pivotal consolidation in the tokenization arena for Kraken as it advances toward a potential 2026 IPO.
Backed Finance issues blockchain-based tokens representing a suite of about 71 traditional financial assets like stocks and ETFs, all backed one-to-one by real holdings. The firm claims the spot as the second-largest provider of tokenized public stocks, with a reported 23% share of the market according to RWA.xyz.
Kraken did not disclose the financial details of the transaction in its official blog post.
Buying Backed formalizes a deep technical partnership that has evolved throughout the past year. Backed’s infrastructure has been central to xStocks since its debut, enabling products that have achieved over $5 billion in total trading volume on Kraken. The exchange first launched the service for the US, then added European availability, and later integrated support for Tron, BNB Chain, and Solana.
The reach of Backed’s infrastructure extends well beyond Kraken. It forms the technical backbone for a widening array of tokenization integrations, such as Bybit’s move to list tokenized equities like Nvidia and Strategy on the Mantle network.
