May 23, 2025

 

(KRAKEN WILL LAUNCH TOKENIZED STOCKS)

May 23, 2025

 

Hello everyone

 

CRYPTO AND THE UK – NEW REGULATORY CONTROLS.

In just over six months’ time, when 2026 rolls around, UK regulations will mandate full reporting of all crypto transactions. 

Firms will have to log:

Sender & recipient names

Addresses & tax IDs

Full trade details (token type, quantity, GBP value, timestamp)

Failure to comply may result in fines of up to 300 pounds per user.

No more financial privacy in UK-regulated crypto.

Possible action steps:

Familiarise yourself with tools like BISQ – a decentralised exchange with no central custody or KYC.

Learn how to operate with peer-to-peer settlements.

Explore privacy-preserving currencies like Monero (XMR)

Consider multi-jurisdictional structures or self-sovereign setups if appropriate.

KRAKEN JUMPS INTO TOKENIZATION

Kraken (a crypto exchange) will offer tokenized US stocks to users worldwide.

Within the next few weeks, tokenized U.S. stocks will trade 24/7 as crypto assets.

What does this mean?

It means there will be

No brokers

No market hours

No borders.

Kraken’s Digital Asset Exchange’s new product is called xStocks, and it will launch for non-U.S. customers across Europe, Asia, LATAM and Africa.

Benefits:

Backed 1:1 by real shares

Settles instantly

Trades globally, 24/7

Deployed on Solana

Use as collateral in DeFi or hold in your wallet.

In other words –

Retail investors outside the U.S. get cheaper, faster access to U.S. equities.

Tokenized shares can be used across crypto rails – wallets, lending, staking.

xStocks blurs the line between TradFi and DeFi.

Market doesn’t sleep anymore – 24/7 trading becomes real.

I have spoken about tokenization before and made a point of including information about it in sales webinars, so listeners can be informed about what’s happening in this rapidly expanding corner of the financial world.  We are certainly in the very early stages presently.

BlackRock, Robinhood, and Franklin Templeton are all building.

The SEC just hosted a roundtable on tokenized securities.

Democratizing global market access is the end game here.

$120 trillion sits in global equity markets, and if we think about it, most of it is locked behind geographical barriers and legacy infrastructure.

Tokenization could unlock the door to massive US capital inflows.

 

 

TRUMP AND HARVARD ARE HAVING A SPAT

Trump has frozen more than $2 billion in research funding for Harvard.  He has accused the school of failing to protect Jewish students.  The administration also regards diversity, equity and inclusion programs that were introduced to make amends for dark aspects of the nation’s history as racist in themselves.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has accused Harvard of “perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes-pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion ‘practices.”

The Trump Administration has told Harvard University it can’t enrol any more international students.  And the international students who are already at the university must now transfer or lose their legal status.  (Harvard has around 100 Australian students, so I guess they will either return home or transfer to another college.  Maybe Europe will welcome them, and benefit from their knowledge. 

Why has this happened?

The U.S. has shut down Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification.  This means the school can no longer enrol foreign students. 

Everyone loses in this scenario.  The students lose, the university loses, and the United States loses as well. 

 

 

QI CORNER

Douglas Burns (Family Offices & Institutional Investors)

 

 

 

Cheers

Jacquie