One of the world’s oldest stock exchanges is taking a major step toward blockchain-based trading. The London Stock Exchange has partnered with Payward, the parent company of Kraken, to tokenize the 100 largest London-listed companies through the xStocks framework, potentially giving eligible investors in more than 110 countries 24/7 access to some of Britain’s biggest public companies.
The partnership goes beyond simply creating blockchain copies of existing stocks. The companies also plan to explore native LSE-issued equity tokens that could eventually carry the same shareholder rights and fungibility as traditional shares.
100 of London’s Biggest Stocks Are Coming to xStocks
Under the first phase, Payward plans to tokenize the 100 largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange as xStocks.
The first assets are expected to become available in the coming weeks through Kraken and other xStocks Alliance platforms.
Unlike a cryptocurrency issued by the underlying company, xStocks are 1:1-backed tokenized representations of publicly traded securities. They track the performance of the underlying stock while operating on blockchain rails.
That allows eligible holders to potentially:
- Trade the assets around the clock
- Move them between participating exchanges and self-custody wallets
- Transfer them across supported blockchain infrastructure
- Use compatible assets inside onchain applications
- Gain exposure to London-listed companies outside traditional UK market hours
The tokens are expected to reach eligible investors across more than 110 countries.
There’s one major catch — xStocks aren’t currently available to investors in the United Kingdom or United States.
London Stock Exchange Plans to Trade xStocks Itself
The second phase is potentially even bigger.
Subject to regulatory approval, the London Stock Exchange intends to begin listing xStocks on LSE 24 in 2027.
LSE 24 is the exchange’s planned 24-hour trading venue and represents part of a broader effort to expand beyond conventional market hours.
If approved, the arrangement would create an unusual bridge between traditional and blockchain markets.
Investors could potentially interact with tokenized equities through digital wallets and crypto-native platforms while LSE member firms gain access to those assets through familiar regulated market infrastructure.
The eventual xStocks lineup is expected to include tokenized equities representing securities listed across the:
United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Hong Kong.
xStocks Has Already Generated $40 Billion in Trading Volume
Payward isn’t starting this experiment from scratch.
The company launched xStocks in June 2025, initially focusing heavily on tokenized U.S. equities.
Since then, the platform has grown to:
- More than $40 billion in total trading volume
- Nearly $20 billion settled directly onchain
- More than 200,000 holders
- Availability across multiple blockchain ecosystems
The expansion into London-listed companies significantly increases the geographical reach of the model.
Just this week, xStocks also launched $SHEINx, providing eligible investors with tokenized exposure to Shein following the company’s Hong Kong IPO.
Now Payward is moving from individual international stocks toward tokenizing an entire group of blue-chip companies from one of the world’s largest exchanges.
The Bigger Plan Is to Put Actual LSE Shares Onchain
Perhaps the most important part of the announcement isn’t the first 100 xStocks.
It’s what comes next.
Payward and the London Stock Exchange said they will explore creating native LSE-issued equity tokens.
There’s an important difference between the two models.
xStocks today
Traditional share → held as backing → token representing the share
Native tokenized equity
Company issues share → ownership recorded directly through blockchain-based infrastructure
The second model could eventually preserve traditional shareholder rights while making the securities digitally transferable and programmable.
LSE says it is examining how its Digital Securities Depository, or DSD, could support the issuance, transfer, settlement and servicing of these digital securities.
That would push tokenization beyond creating blockchain trackers of traditional assets and toward making blockchain part of the actual infrastructure used to issue and manage public-company shares.
London Is Building More Than a Tokenized Stock Market
The partnership also fits into a much larger blockchain strategy underway at London Stock Exchange Group.
LSEG is developing several pieces of digital-market infrastructure, including:
LSE 24 for extended trading, Digital Securities Depository for tokenized securities and Digital Settlement House for programmable settlement using commercial bank money.
Together, those systems could potentially address trading, ownership and settlement rather than using blockchain for only one part of a transaction.
Julia Hoggett, CEO of LSE plc and Head of Digital and Securities Markets at LSEG, said tokenization has the potential to transform how investors access markets and how companies use them, while emphasizing that traditional investor protections and market standards still need to be preserved.
Wall Street and Crypto Are Starting to Use the Same Rails
Tokenized stocks have spent years existing mostly on the crypto side of finance.
This partnership changes the equation because the London Stock Exchange itself is participating.
Payward gets access to one of the world’s most established capital-market institutions. The LSE gets a bridge into crypto-native wallets, blockchain networks and investors accustomed to markets that operate around the clock.
And the long-term ambition goes beyond tokenized replicas.
If the partnership eventually results in companies issuing fully rights-bearing shares directly onchain, blockchain would no longer simply be another place to trade exposure to stocks.
It could become part of the infrastructure underneath the stock market itself.
Kraken helped bring crypto trading to traditional investors. Now its parent company Payward is working with the London Stock Exchange to do the reverse — bring one of the world’s oldest stock markets onto crypto rails.
