One direct method of owning oil is through the purchase of oil futures or oil futures options. Futures are highly volatile and involve a high degree of risk. Additionally, investing in futures may require the investor to do a lot of homework as well as invest a large amount of capital. Another direct method of owning oil is through the purchase of commodity-based oil exchangetraded funds (ETFs). ETFs trade on a stock exchange and can be purchased and sold in a manner similar to stocks. For example, buying one share of the U.S. Oil Fund (USO) would give you exposure to roughly one barrel of oil. In addition, investors can gain indirect exposure to oil through the purchase of energy-sector ETFs, like the iShares Global Energy Sector Index Fund (IXC), and to energy-sector mutual funds, like the T. Rowe Price New Era Fund (PRNEX). These energy-specific ETFs and mutual funds invest solely in the stocks of oil and oil services companies and come with lower risk. Through the use of smart contracts, we can now replace paper and complex legal agreements that are cumbersome, difficult to transfer and can be hard to track for the average person and even for sophisticated investors. Our solution for commodity investing (mainly in oil) would be to switch to a digital system along the lines of Bitcoin but linked to an asset. This solution is the PERMIAN Token (XPR). Imagine a vault of oil barrels. The oil barrels are owned by "Oil-owner Inc." and the vault is owned by "Vault Inc." Vault Inc. has a spectacular reputation and third-party auditors who verify the amount of oil barrels in its vault. Oil-owner Inc. could offer a digital token to the public that represents ownership of the oil barrels and through a smart contract with Vault Inc. maintain a public off-chain registry that relates fractional interest in the gold with the tokens. For every token sold, Oil-owner Inc. transfers ownership to Vault Inc., who holds it on behalf of the token owner. Vault Inc. guarantees redemption of the value price of oil barrels by anyone who can prove ownership through a digital signature. Oil-owner Inc. can take advantage of the fact that Vault Inc. is trusted (and audited). Owners of the tokens rely on Vault Inc.'s representations and not on Oil-owner Inc. (even though Oil-owner Inc. is the token issuer). One of the main advantages would be that buyers of the tokens could know that they are the only person who has received the token, whereas a buyer of a paper certificate has no way of knowing that the same certificate hasn't been sold to multiple people.