Cake Wallet, a privacy-focused mobile cryptocurrency app, recently announced that it will be integrating xStocks into its supported tokens and will be released in its next update. xStocks technology gives users around the world access to world-class stocks like Google, Amazon, and Nvidia in a familiar cryptographic format, minimizing the privacy and friction-filled user experiences associated with traditional finance.
“Cake Wallet allows anyone to become their own bank and their own brokerage, saving and investing from the same decentralized ecosystem,” said Vikrant Sharma, CEO of Cake Labs. LetsExchange Chief Product Officer (CPO) Alex J. also commented on the announcement in a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, saying, “It’s great to have xStocks trading now available on Cake Wallet, one of the most trusted wallets in the crypto space.”
xStocks will be available to Cake Wallet users directly on the app. Presumably, very little, if any, personal information is required for users to trade assets. Although implementation details at Cake were not shared, Cake Wallet’s privacy-first design suggests a similar user experience. Wallets like Phantom have recently launched similar access to tokenized stocks. There is no need to ask users for information beyond their control of the private key (familiar to many users as the 12 words that must be stored securely).
The rise of this interface to world-class finance is indicative of a growing generational divide, as younger, more tech-savvy users grow tired of the controls and restrictions of traditional finance and are willing to take the risk of nepotism into their own hands.
For all its shortcomings, cryptography resulted in the most widespread public distribution of cryptographic materials in the history of cryptography. Hundreds of millions of people around the world likely have some kind of cryptocurrency wallet on their phones, giving them access to cryptographic technology so powerful that the U.S. government once considered cryptocurrencies a weapon. As a result, millions of people will have access to financial tools that were previously available only to the wealthiest citizens of the First World.
This encryption protects you from hackers as user data is never exposed to third-party financial services. The inability of companies to protect user data continues to be proven in hack after hack, as seen recently with Discord, where 70 million user ID records were compromised. This type of hack may be related to the rising cost of identity theft in the United States. Because these records are used to defraud users of traditional finance.
Ironically, the same regulations that make it impossible for traditional finance to expand into developing countries also prevent Americans from accessing financial tools like xStocks due to the high compliance burden they must adhere to. The press release explained that Cake Wallet’s new features are limited to a very interesting list of countries. “xStocks will be accessible in nearly every country around the world. Due to regulatory restrictions, the service is not available in the United States, Australia, Canada, Belgium, United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.” These countries have something strange in common.
Cake Wallet will likely need to implement some kind of geo-location filter based on the Internet IP address that users log in to, but the press release did not share any details on this.
xStocks tokenized shares are issued by Backed.fi, a Swiss-based financial company that has been on the market since 2021. Backed.fi is the main trading partner that xStocks users need to trust, acting as a kind of broker between the companies issuing these stocks and the users buying xStocks. It’s also unlikely that users will have any kind of voting rights, and it’s not clear how dividends on some stocks will work. Nevertheless, this may be the first time many native crypto users have easy access to the world’s best stocks. This is in stark contrast to the meme coins and highly speculative crypto assets available to this user base. This kind of competition may be a very good thing.
The post Cake Labs launches xStocks on Cake Wallet, allowing crypto users around the world to trade top stocks originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Juan Galt.
