Apparently there’s a new way to invest in US stocks, without living in the US.

Last week, Switzerland-based Backed Finance launched a tokenized version of a BlackRock ETF (CSPX).

Instead of buying shares in this particular BlackRock ETF, now you can simply purchase the ‘bCSPX’ token, which runs on Ethereum.

The token is backed 1:1 by shares of those stocks, and the shares are held by a licensed custodian, according to Backed.

Users can purchase bCSPX tokens if they are in any country other than: Iran, North Korea, Syria or…the US (?)

The decision not to make the token available to those in the US is likely a decision by Backed to avoid having to navigate the SEC's lack of regulatory clarity right now.

But, if you’re in the US, you can still purchase shares in the BlackRock ETF through all the normal brokerage routes anyway, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

Pairing a token with an ETF to provide access to those who otherwise would not be able to invest in the American stock market brings us one step closer to financial - dare we use the buzzword - democratization.

Even BlackRock’s CEO said last year that the ‘next generation for markets’ is in tokenization.

Let’s see what gets tokenized next!

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