Kraken gave token holders a vote, and quietly solved tokenized equity’s biggest legal gap

A Jersey-law custody structure lets xStocks holders instruct real shareholder votes through an on-chain mechanism, closing a governance gap the tokenized equity industry has discussed for years but never shipped. Summary Kraken’s xStocks extended shareholder voting rights to its 125,000-plus token holders, letting them instruct the underlying custodian how to cast real votes at company annual general meetings, making xStocks the first major tokenized equity platform to do this at retail scale. At launch on June 30, 2025, xStocks explicitly excluded voting rights, with documentation noting that traders could not vote in shareholder meetings. The governance pass-through is a fundamental upgrade to what the token confers. The mechanism relies on Backed Assets (JE) Limited’s Jersey-incorporated custody structure, which allows beneficiary instruction rights to be embedded contractually without triggering U.S. securities registration requirements. Every comparable tokenized equity product, including Robinhood’s EU stock tokens and the now-discontinued Binance BSTOCKS, has explicitly excluded shareholder governance rights in its legal terms, treating the tokens as pure economic instrument...