Backed Finance is a Swiss issuer that wraps real shares of Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Coinbase, the SPY ETF, and short-term Treasuries into ERC-20 tokens. The underlying stock sits with a regulated custodian; the token moves onchain. This guide explains what bTokens are, how the mint and redemption flow works, which chains they trade on, who can buy them, and how dividends are handled.
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Backed Finance AG is a Zug-based company founded in 2021. It issues tokenized securities under a Swiss prospectus regime supervised by FINMA (the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority) and a Liechtenstein FMA-approved base prospectus. Backed does not custody the underlying shares itself — InCore Bank, a FINMA-licensed Swiss bank, acts as custodian and the structure separates issuer, custodian, and token holder so that bToken holders have a senior claim on the underlying securities in a bankruptcy scenario. The company has raised funding from Coinbase Ventures, Semantic Ventures, and Gnosis, and most of its early product line launched on Gnosis Chain before expanding.
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bTokens are ERC-20 tokens that each represent one share or unit of an underlying security held one-to-one by Backed's custodian. The "bX" naming convention applies to Backed's single-equity products — for example, bX-AAPL tracks Apple, bX-NVDA tracks Nvidia, bX-TSLA tracks Tesla, and bX-COIN tracks Coinbase. ETF and bond products use shorter tickers: bCSPX tracks the iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF (the European MSCI/S&P wrapper many investors use as a global proxy), bSPY tracks the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, bIB01 tracks the iShares 0–3 Month Treasury Bond ETF, and bHIGH tracks a high-yield credit ETF. Each token's price tracks the underlying market price during trading hours and trades around net asset value on DEXes outside of those hours, with arbitrageurs closing gaps when primary markets reopen.
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The flow is built around a small set of KYC-verified institutional partners that Backed calls authorized participants. When an authorized participant wants to create supply, they send fiat to Backed, Backed instructs InCore Bank to buy the underlying shares on a regulated exchange, the shares are credited to the custody account, and Backed mints the matching bTokens on Ethereum or one of the supported L2s. Redemption runs the same loop in reverse — bTokens are burned, the custodian sells the shares, and fiat is wired back. Retail holders rarely touch the primary issuance — they buy and sell bTokens on secondary venues like Balancer, Uniswap, or Cow Protocol where authorized participants seed the liquidity.
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Backed launched on Gnosis Chain in 2022 and has since expanded across the EVM ecosystem. As of May 2026, bTokens are issued natively or bridged to Ethereum mainnet, Polygon PoS, Base, Arbitrum, Gnosis Chain, and Avalanche, with the deepest DEX liquidity concentrated on Base and Gnosis for the equity products and on Ethereum mainnet for bIB01. Cross-chain transfers between the supported networks rely on Backed's own canonical bridges plus Chainlink CCIP integrations on the newer deployments. If you are moving bTokens between L2s for trading, check the official Backed app for the current canonical route — wrapped versions on other chains may not be redeemable directly.
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bTokens are sold under a Swiss prospectus that excludes US persons, UK retail investors, and several other restricted jurisdictions. In practice, eligible buyers are non-US individuals and institutions in most of the EEA, Switzerland, and a list of approved non-restricted countries. Authorized participants run KYC at the issuance layer, but retail buyers picking up bTokens on a DEX are technically interacting with the token as a bearer asset — Backed's transfer-agent contracts do not enforce per-wallet whitelisting on secondary markets the way some competitors do. That said, the prospectus exclusion still legally bars US persons from holding the security, and reputable wallets and front-ends increasingly geofence access.
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Dividends paid by the underlying stock or ETF are received by InCore Bank into the custody account, and Backed passes them through to token holders. The mechanism differs by product. For equity bTokens like bX-AAPL, dividends are typically reinvested into more of the underlying shares at the issuer level, which causes the token's reference price to step up to reflect the larger NAV per token — there is no separate claim transaction for retail holders. For bond products like bIB01, coupon and roll income accrues into the per-token NAV the same way an accumulating ETF works, so the token price drifts up over time rather than paying a yield in a separate stream. Stock splits, mergers, and other corporate actions are mirrored onchain through Backed's transfer agent.
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The primary venues are Balancer (deep weighted pools on Gnosis Chain and Base), Uniswap v3 on Ethereum mainnet and Arbitrum, and Cow Protocol for larger orders that benefit from CoW's batch-auction MEV protection. Aggregators including 1inch, Paraswap, and Eco Routes can route across these pools. Liquidity is thinner outside of US market hours and during weekends — spreads on bX-AAPL or bX-NVDA can widen meaningfully on a Sunday before the New York open. The bCSPX and bIB01 pools tend to be the most consistently liquid because both products are popular collateral in DeFi vaults like Morpho and Aave's GHO market.
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Backed's edge is its Swiss prospectus structure and a multi-year live track record across multiple chains — bIB01 alone has been onchain since early 2023 and is integrated into a long list of DeFi protocols as collateral. Dinari, by contrast, operates under a US SEC-registered transfer-agent model and is one of the few platforms that can serve US persons through its dShares product. Kraken's xStocks initiative launched in 2025 as a centralized issuance program with broader retail distribution but a more limited DeFi composability story. Robinhood's tokenized stocks rolled out in EU markets in 2025 on Arbitrum and emphasize a closed retail experience over open DeFi integration. For a deeper side-by-side, see support/en/articles/15083161 and the per-platform deep dives in support/en/articles/15083159, support/en/articles/15083158, and support/en/articles/15083160.
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Three categories. First, issuer and custodian risk — bToken holders ultimately depend on InCore Bank and Backed honoring redemption. The senior claim structure helps but is not zero risk. Second, secondary-market liquidity risk — DEX pools are concentrated on a handful of pairs and can dislocate during volatile US sessions or when an authorized participant pulls back. Third, regulatory drift — the prospectus framework Backed relies on could change, and any jurisdiction shifting from "permitted" to "restricted" would force front-ends to geofence existing holders. None of these are unique to Backed, but they are sharper than the equivalent risks on a regulated exchange.
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Issuer structure, custodian relationship, and product list verified against Backed Finance's official documentation at docs.backed.fi and product pages at app.backed.fi as of May 2026. Swiss prospectus and FINMA supervision context cross-referenced with FINMA's public registry and Backed's base prospectus filings. AUM and onchain supply figures sourced from rwa.xyz's Backed issuer page. Chain availability and DEX venue data verified against Backed's app, DEX Screener, and DeFiLlama.
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