Digital assets platform Kraken has recently announced updates to boost its platform’s offerings, seeking to further bridge the gap between traditional finance and decentralized ecosystems.
The first is the listing of Hedera’s native token, HBAR, for trading, and the second is the expansion of its tokenized U.S. equities product, xStocks, to the BNB Chain.
Recently, Kraken officially launched trading for HBAR, the native token of the Hedera network, a public distributed ledger built on Hashgraph technology.
HBAR’s integration into Kraken’s platform is a significant step for the Hedera ecosystem, known for its high throughput, low latency, and asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (ABFT) consensus model.
HBAR serves multiple purposes within Hedera, including transaction fees, staking, and governance, making it a cornerstone of the network’s operations.
The listing has generated excitement within the crypto space, as evidenced by posts on social media, which highlight HBAR’s inclusion as a key adoption milestone.
With Kraken’s 10 million+ user base and solid liquidity metrics, HBAR’s visibility and accessibility may improve.
One social media post noted, “Kraken is one of the last top 5 exchanges missing; that gap is now closed.”
In another update, Kraken, in collaboration with Backed, a Swiss-based tokenized asset issuer, announced the integration of xStocks with BNB Chain, one of the world’s largest blockchain ecosystems.
This partnership expands xStocks—tokenized representations of U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs such as AAPLx (Apple), TSLAx (Tesla), SPYx (S&P 500 ETF), and NVDAx (Nvidia)—to BNB Chain as BEP-20 tokens.
This follows their initial deployment on Solana, where over 60 tokenized equities were launched for users in 185 countries.
Arjun Sethi, Kraken’s co-CEO, stated the future of markets will be chain neutral.
Backed’s co-founder, Adam Levi, emphasized that xStocks aims to surpass stablecoins in utility by enabling composability within DeFi.
BNB Chain’s active Web3 community and global reach make it a suitable partner for this vision.
Eligible non-U.S. Kraken clients will soon be able to deposit and withdraw xStocks via BNB Chain, complementing Solana’s infrastructure.
This expansion aligns with a broader industry trend, with platforms like Bybit, Gate, and Bitget also supporting xStocks, and traditional players like Robinhood and Coinbase exploring tokenized equities.
Despite modest onchain trading volume of $32.8 million, total activity on centralized exchanges suggests significant potential for growth.
Kraken’s announcements reflect a strategic push to merge traditional finance with blockchain innovation.
