The tokenized equities market grew by nearly 2,878% in a single year, from roughly $32 million in January 2025 to over $963 million by January 2026. That kind of growth doesn’t happen without a clear leader at the front, and if you’ve been following the convergence of crypto and traditional finance, you’ve probably already started asking who is the largest in tokenized ETFs? The answer is xStocks, Kraken’s tokenized equities framework, and the scale of what it’s achieved in under eight months is worth understanding properly. For anyone already holding or earning crypto, this is the part of the story that directly affects where digital assets are heading next.

The Numbers Behind the Name

By February 2026, xStocks had surpassed $25 billion in total transaction volume, counted across centralised exchanges, decentralised venues and mint/redemption activity. That’s not a theoretical figure padded by one-off institutional settlements. It reflects real, repeated market usage from over 80,000 unique onchain holders and more than $3.5 billion in onchain volume alone.

The market share picture is equally clear. xStocks accounts for 68% of the top 25 tokenized stocks by unique holders and holds 8 of the top 11 positions in tokenized equities ranked by holder count, as of February 17, 2026. In a category that was barely a rounding error on a spreadsheet 18 months ago, these figures represent the kind of gravitational pull that tends to compound over time.

Think about what’s actually happening here: assets that previously required a brokerage account, a Social Security Number and market hours are now being held permissionlessly, around the clock, by people in over 110 countries. That accessibility is the whole point.

Why the 1:1 Backing Model Matters

A tokenized ETF is only as credible as what sits behind it. The xStocks model keeps it straightforward: each token is backed one-to-one by its underlying stock or ETF, held by a licensed custodian in a bankruptcy-remote structure. You’re not holding a derivative, a promise or a synthetic approximation. The underlying asset is held on your behalf, segregated from the issuer’s own balance sheet, which means the token’s value doesn’t depend on any single company’s financial health.

This matters more than it might seem. The crypto space has seen enough undercollateralised products and opaque structures to make scepticism a reasonable default. A 1:1 model with a licensed custodian at a regulated entity answers those concerns directly, and for retail investors in particular, that clarity is what makes the difference between a product they’ll actually use and one they’ll scroll past.

xStocks currently operate across Solana, Ethereum and TON, with additional blockchain integrations planned. The result is genuine cross-chain mobility rather than an asset locked inside a single ecosystem. That portability is increasingly a baseline expectation, not a premium feature. More than 80,000 unique onchain holders and nearly $225 million in aggregate AUM reflect a user base that has already made its preference clear.

• Assets are fully collateralised 1:1 by the underlying stock or ETF
• Held with a licensed custodian in a bankruptcy-remote legal structure
• Live across Solana, Ethereum and TON with more integrations pending
• Integrated across centralised exchanges, DeFi protocols and self-custody wallets
• Available to retail investors, professional traders and institutional clients worldwide

An Open Market, Not a Walled Garden

One of the more interesting design choices behind xStocks is the xStocks Alliance: a framework built around interoperability, permissionless access and open standards. Major platforms including Kraken, Bybit and Gate.io have already integrated xStocks, bringing tokenized U.S. equities to a significantly broader user base than any single platform could reach alone. Open systems create deeper liquidity, stronger network effects and more durable markets than any closed, proprietary structure.

In February 2026, Kraken took this a step further by listing the world’s first regulated tokenized equity perpetual futures using xStocks as the underlying. That’s a meaningful signal. Perpetual futures have been a core product in crypto derivatives markets for years; applying that infrastructure to tokenized equities means traders can now go long or short on stocks like NVIDIA (NVDAx) or Apple (AAPLx) with the kind of flexibility they’ve always had in crypto, within a regulated framework.

New assets are being added every month, new builders are integrating the framework, and new partners continue to join the Alliance. This isn’t incremental expansion. It’s the formation of a new market structure built for the internet age, without borders or downtime.

Your Assets On the Internet’s Terms

The broader tokenization wave is still in its early stages. Institutional players from Goldman Sachs to JP Morgan are evaluating tokenized fund structures. Regulators in the U.S. and EU are moving toward clearer frameworks, and in January 2026, F/m Investments filed with the SEC to tokenize Treasury bill ETF shares, a move that signals how far regulatory appetite has shifted in a short time.

For anyone already earning or holding crypto, tokenized ETFs represent a logical extension of the same principle you’re already operating on: owning real assets on programmable rails, without the friction of traditional finance. xStocks has made that proposition concrete, at scale, with a model that prioritises transparency and access in equal measure. The $25 billion transaction volume milestone isn’t the ceiling. It’s the starting point.

The question worth sitting with isn’t whether tokenized equities will become a significant part of how global markets operate. It’s whether you’re paying close enough attention to understand them before they do.