Catenaa, Sunday, September 20, 2026- Singapore-based Alpha Ladder Finance has launched access to xStocks tokenized US equities for institutional and accredited investors through its WealthX platform, expanding regulated access to blockchain-based versions of publicly traded shares across selected Asian markets.
The launch follows a memorandum of understanding between Alpha Ladder, MetaComp and Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken and developer of the xStocks framework.
Under the arrangement, Alpha Ladder will distribute xStocks in selected Asia-Pacific markets, subject to investor eligibility, onboarding and regulatory requirements.
Alpha Ladder holds a Capital Markets Services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The company said the integration allows qualifying investors to gain exposure to global equities through an existing regulated wealth-management relationship rather than accessing tokenized markets independently.
xStocks are blockchain-based tokens designed to provide economic exposure to publicly traded securities.
The products are issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited and are fully collateralized on a one-to-one basis with underlying assets, according to the announcement.
However, investors holding an xStock do not own the underlying company shares directly and do not receive shareholder rights such as voting rights.
The products are also not registered under the US Securities Act and are unavailable to US persons.
Alpha Ladder said xStocks now cover more than 700 assets and have processed more than $40 billion in combined transaction volume, with more than 200,000 unique holders.
Those figures were drawn from Dune Analytics and supplied in the companies’ announcement.
The launch comes as tokenization moves from experimental blockchain projects toward regulated financial distribution.
Tokenized equities attempt to combine exposure to traditional stocks with features associated with digital assets, including blockchain settlement and potentially broader trading hours.
For institutional investors, however, access depends heavily on custody, compliance, investor classification and the legal structure behind the tokens.
That is where Alpha Ladder’s role becomes important.
Rather than creating the tokenized equities itself, the firm is acting as a regulated distribution channel for investors who meet applicable requirements.
MetaComp supports the broader infrastructure through fiat and stablecoin payment services.
The Singapore-based company holds a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and operates payment and stablecoin conversion infrastructure.
Payward provides the xStocks framework but is not licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to provide regulated financial services in Singapore.
The companies previously agreed to explore tokenized capital-market opportunities across the Asia-Pacific region.
The new xStocks rollout is one of the first commercial developments to emerge from that collaboration.
Interest in tokenized real-world assets has increased sharply as financial institutions experiment with bringing stocks, bonds, funds and other conventional assets onto blockchain networks.
The onchain value of real-world assets reached about $19.3 billion at the end of March 2026, compared with about $5.4 billion in January 2025, according to CoinGecko data cited in the announcement.
Institutional interest has also increased.
An EY and Coinbase survey published in 2026 found that 63% of institutional investors said their firms were very interested in tokenized assets, up from 57% a year earlier.
McKinsey has estimated that tokenized assets, excluding cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, could reach about $2 trillion in market value by 2030.
The growth has shifted attention from whether traditional assets can technically be tokenized to how those products can be distributed within existing regulatory structures.
For Alpha Ladder, xStocks extends WealthX beyond traditional investment products into tokenized global equities.
The companies said they plan to explore additional tokenized products, counterparties and use cases across the region.
The broader test will be whether regulated access can turn institutional interest in tokenization into sustained trading and investment activity.
