Backed Finance CEO: xStocks issuer chooses Switzerland to avoid whitelist restrictions on Tesla tokenized stocks

Jinse Finance reported that Adam Levi, co-founder of Backed Finance, stated that seeking a balance between compliance requirements and the openness of decentralized finance ultimately led the company to settle in Switzerland. He said the company is registered in Europe because Switzerland allows them to issue digital representations of stocks such as Tesla and Nvidia (referred to as xStocks), which can be freely transferred rather than being subject to so-called whitelist restrictions. Levi recalled, “We looked at five jurisdictions, and lawyers told me, ‘Yes, you can do it, but it will be a whitelist-permissioned model.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not interested. I won’t build it that way because I wouldn’t use it myself.’” In the crypto industry, whitelists are often used to approve individuals to participate in specific events, such as minting NFTs or investing in the initial offering of a cryptocurrency. In the context of tokenized stocks, whitelists can determine who is eligible to hold the digital representations of these stocks.