The Future of Tokenized Markets Must Be Open. Not Captive. Today, we announced our agreement to acquire @BackedFi . This is more than an acquisition. It is a commitment to building market infrastructure that is open, interoperable, and aligned with how modern financial systems actually scale. Technology endures when the underlying architecture is clean, verifiable, and built for permissionless innovation. Open standards win because they allow builders to innovate without needing approval from a gatekeeper. Tokenization is now at a pivotal moment. The question is whether the industry will replicate closed loops or instead converge on a global standard that functions across applications, ecosystems, and economies. Many write headlines and create noise around *their* closed platform with no usage, no engagement, and no distribution. Backed helped to create @xStocksFi with us, as an open and multidimensional protocol. It is infrastructure rather than a product wrapper. It is designed for developers, individuals, and institutions that require transparent issuance, predictable behavior, and globally interoperable settlement. This acquisition brings capital, incentives, and technical direction into alignment around a model that prioritizes openness rather than control. THE PATH FORWARD xStocks already spans more than sixty tokenized equities and exchange traded funds across multiple chains. It is built for portability, composability, and true ownership. Integrating Backed into Kraken accelerates this trajectory by strengthening issuance, deepening liquidity, and embedding tokenized equities directly into everyday financial experiences. Our strategy is straightforward. Tokenized finance only scales if it remains open. Not tied to a single chain. Not locked inside a proprietary stack. Not dependent on intermediaries that extract value in the background. A global standard must meet users and builders where they already operate. Similar to widely adopted digital dollar tokens such as USDC and USDT, xStocks is intended to serve as a neutral financial infrastructure. There is one important distinction. xStocks can generate revenue through securities lending, and those rewards will be returned to token holders. The value created by your assets should accrue to you. Not to a custodian. Not to a broker dealer. Not to any opaque intermediary. This reflects a core principle. Customers must benefit from the full economic utility of the assets they choose to hold. @krakenfx is committed to ensuring that portions of revenue or rewards generated through the xStocks platform are distributed transparently through a mechanism itself. More details will come, but the foundation is clear. Customers should always benefit directly from the performance of their own assets. THE CONSEQUENCE If tokenization moves toward closed environments, we will recreate the limits of legacy finance with new branding. Innovation slows. Liquidity fractures. Ownership becomes conditional. If the architecture remains open and interoperable, markets grow according to their own dynamics. Developers build more. Users gain more control. Capital moves with fewer intermediaries and greater transparency. This is the future we choose. And @krakenfx will choose open, transparent, permissionless.

Kraken is now powering crypto trading for @Bunq’s 12.5M users — one of Europe’s leading neobanks. This is part of a broader shift. While most of the world is focused on banking-as-a-service, Kraken is quietly building something more foundational: crypto-as-a-platform. Think “Intel Inside” for the next generation of financial infrastructure. Kraken Embed is how we get there — fast, compliant, enterprise-grade APIs that help serious builders launch regulated crypto products quickly and with confidence. You’ll be hearing a lot more from us in 2025. blog.kraken.com/product/krak…