Kraken to buy Backed Finance in tokenization push ahead of IPO

Crypto exchange Kraken has agreed to acquire Backed Finance, the tokenized asset issuer behind its xStocks offering, tightening its grip on a segment that has become a fast-growing corner of digital assets as the exchange moves toward a planned 2026 IPO.

Backed issues onchain representations of around 71 assets across public equities and ETFs, each backed one-for-one by underlying securities. The firm is the second-largest provider of tokenized public stocks with roughly 23% market share, according to RWA.xyz data.

Kraken did not disclose the terms of the deal in its blog post.

The acquisition formalizes a partnership Kraken has spent the past year expanding. Backed has powered xStocks since launch, supporting products that have now generated more than $5 billion in cumulative trading volume on Kraken. The exchange rolled the service out in the U.S. earlier this year, added European access, and later extended support to Tron, BNB, and Solana.

Backed’s infrastructure also sits beneath a growing number of tokenization integrations across the industry. For example, Bybit relied on Backed to add tokenized equities in Nvidia, Strategy, and other companies to Mantle’s onchain ecosystem.

The acquisition comes as tokenization moves from experimentation to mainstream adoption. BlackRock executives Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein recently said tokenization could reshape financial markets as profoundly as the early internet reshaped information.

Standard Chartered has projected that tokenized real-world assets could reach $2 trillion by 2028, with most activity concentrating on Ethereum. Rising demand for tokenized yield products and collateralizable onchain assets has also accelerated growth throughout 2025, analysts from Oracle protocol RedStone said.

Bringing Backed in-house gives Kraken tighter control over the mechanics of tokenized equities and a direct path to integrate those assets across spot markets, collateral frameworks, and future products. Backed, founded in 2021, will continue supporting its existing tokens as it transitions under Kraken’s ownership, according to Tuesday’s announcement.

Kraken has been positioning itself to capitalize on the tokenization wave and broader blockchain adoption. The company closed a funding round this year, valuing it at about $20 billion.

The firm has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, and struck several large deals — including its purchase of the Small Exchange to build out U.S. derivatives trading and the $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader, the largest crypto–TradFi deal to date.