Overview
- Payward, parent of Kraken, announced on Wednesday that Kraken customers and select xStocks Alliance members will soon be able to register non-binding interest in U.S. IPOs and receive tokenized allocations in the coming weeks.
- Under the xStocks process partner exchanges will open an indication-of-interest window, Payward will aggregate demand and work with underwriting syndicates, and final allocations will be tokenized and delivered on listing day as 1:1-backed tokens held by a regulated custodian.
- Payward says xStocks tokens are blockchain-agnostic and interoperable across chains and that the framework processed more than $30 billion in volume with over $6 billion settled onchain and 125,000 holders in its first year.
- The company disclosed that xStocks are not registered under the U.S. Securities Act and are unavailable to U.S. persons in most jurisdictions, while U.S. user access will be facilitated through named intermediaries including Alpaca Securities LLC and Click Capital Markets (ClickIPO).
- Payward warned that allocations are not guaranteed and are subject to underwriter and ClickIPO decisions, that offering prices and allocations can change during book-building, and that the rollout may prompt closer regulatory and market scrutiny as tokenized securities grow.