Tristan is a technology journalist and editorial leader with 8 years of experience covering science, deep tech, finance, politics, and business. Before joining Coinspeaker, he wrote for Cointelegraph and TNW.
Kraken has acquired Backed Finance, absorbing its xStocks tokenization platform that enables trading of Wall Street equities as digital tokens.
Editor Marco T. Lanz
Updated
2 mins read
US-based digital assets exchange Kraken has announced its acquisition of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization firm Backed Finance.
The two firms had previously entered a strategic partnership to expand Backed Finance’s xStocks product onto Kraken’s exchange ecosystem. While no terms have been disclosed as of the time of this article’s publication, it appears Backed Finance will now be absorbed into Kraken FX.
An official post from Backed on Twitter says the total number of xStocks holders has increased to more than 84,000, since the product was launched on June 30. The company added that daily transaction volume exceeded $30 million, total volumes crossed $12 billion, and assets under management reached $175 million in the same period.
Today, we are announcing that Backed will become part of @krakenfx. For us, this moment represents the culmination of a long and demanding journey, one shaped by a clear vision, guided by discipline, and driven by a small group of people who believed that equities deserved an… pic.twitter.com/5e1dN3CSmU
— Backed (@BackedFi) December 2, 2025
The deal seemingly centers on xStocks, a RWA product created by Backed that allows users to trade digital tokens that represent traditional real-world asset shares including Wall Street stocks such as Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla. These tokens are fully backed by the equities they’re associated with.
According to a press release from Kraken, the firm’s post-acquisition plans focus on fully integrating xStocks throughout its service stack and accelerating global adoption for the RWA product.
Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi called the acquisition “foundational work for the next era of market structure” in a statement, adding that the merged firms were working to redefine what it means to own assets in the digital era.
The acquisition comes as Kraken reports increased revenue in the amount of $648 million for the third quarter of 2025, up 50% over the previous quarter, and a successful funding round that raised $800 million against a valuation of $20 billion ahead of plans to go public.
As Coinspeaker reported on Nov. 19, Kraken submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), marking an official request to offer common stock in an initial public offering.
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Tristan is a technology journalist and editorial leader with 8 years of experience covering science, deep tech, finance, politics, and business. Before joining Coinspeaker, he wrote for Cointelegraph and TNW.