Kraken Builds Beyond Crypto With Futures, Tokenized Stocks, And Payments

What Happened

In March 2025, Kraken agreed to buy NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion. In April 2025, it launched trading in more than 11,000 U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs for select U.S. clients. In June 2025, it rolled out xStocks for eligible non-U.S. clients, starting with 60 tokenized U.S. equities, and launched Krak, a payments app supporting transfers across more than 160 countries and 300-plus assets.

The company kept building through the second half of 2025 with deals for Capitalise.ai, Breakout, Small Exchange, and Backed, then added Magna in February 2026 and Bitnomial soon after. By early 2026, Kraken was pushing further into tokenized equities as xStocks expanded from 60 at launch to 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs.

A few months later, Kraken used that foothold to launch U.S. regulated crypto futures and said it planned to add commodity, fixed income, FX, and equity futures later in 2025.

Kraken said the purchase would help it launch a fully U.S.-native derivatives suite. Reuters reported the same deal as a move to strengthen Kraken’s American derivatives business for retail and institutional clients.

Kraken formally launched tokenized U.S. equities on June 30, 2025 with 60 assets on the platform.

On December 2, 2025, it announced the acquisition of Backed, the company behind xStocks, saying the deal would bring issuance, trading, and settlement closer together.

By March 18, 2026, Kraken said xStocks had grown to 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs and had surpassed $25 billion in total transaction volume since launch. That growth soon fed into a partnership with Nasdaq, announced through Kraken parent Payward, focused on developing an equities transformation gateway for tokenized equities and helping connect regulated market structure with on-chain distribution.

In February 2026, Payward, the platform behind Kraken, acquired Magna.

Market Context

Kraken has been around long enough to see nearly every version of the crypto market up close.

Founded in 2011, it lived through Bitcoin’s early volatility, the first big exchange era, the ICO boom, the long bear markets, the rise of institutional crypto, and the latest push into tokenized and multi-asset trading.

Let’s take a closer look at how Kraken has been building through this latest phase of the market.

This gave Kraken a direct route into one of the main markets active traders use for hedging and directional bets.

Kraken pushed further in October 2025 when it bought Small Exchange from IG Group for $100 million. Importantly, Small Exchange came with a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market license.

This put Kraken closer to the center of the U.S. futures market.

Why It Matters

Reuters reported on May 22, 2025, that Kraken planned to offer tokenized versions of more than 50 U.S. stocks and ETFs, including Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia, to non-U.S. clients.

Details

Across those cycles, Kraken kept adding products, expanding its reach, and finding new ways to stay relevant as the industry changed around it.

NinjaTrader and regulated finance

The NinjaTrader deal in March 2025 gave Kraken a serious foothold in U.S. regulated futures.

Kraken valued the transaction at $1.5 billion and described NinjaTrader as the leading U.S. retail futures platform.

Small Exchange gave Kraken a U.S. venue

Backed and tokenized equities

Kraken’s tokenized equity push became far more serious in 2025.

Magna took Kraken into token operations

Kraken described Magna as a token management platform used for vesting, claims, distributions, and related workflows.