LSE and Kraken Partner to Bring UK Stocks to Blockchain
The London Stock Exchange (LSEG) and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, have announced a partnership to bring UK-listed stocks onto the blockchain. The first batch of stocks will be from the top 100 companies listed on the LSE, with more to follow in the coming weeks.
These stocks will be represented as xStocks tokens, which are pegged 1:1 to their underlying shares and can be traded 24/7 on centralized exchanges, self-custody wallets, and decentralized applications. The xStocks platform has already seen over $40 billion in cumulative trading volume since its launch, with nearly $20 billion of that taking place on-chain.
The move is expected to expand the reach of UK-listed stocks to investors in 110+ countries, although xStocks are currently not available to UK-based investors. The LSE plans to list and support xStocks trading on its new 24-hour trading platform, LSE 24, pending regulatory approval.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward, said that the partnership aims to prove that blockchain and traditional finance are not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary technologies. The goal is to enable LSE members to issue and service stocks directly on-chain, with full fungibility and rights equivalent to their traditional counterparts.