How to Trade S&P 500 (SP500) in New Zealand

From New Zealand, exposure to S&P 500 runs through a USDC-settled perpetual.

Is S&P 500 trading legal in New Zealand?

Holding, buying and selling crypto is lawful in New Zealand and has been treated as ordinary commercial activity by the state for years. Inland Revenue's position is that cryptoassets are a form of property for tax purposes, that they are excepted financial arrangements, and that buying and selling them is outside GST; the tax treatment turns on the characteristics and use of the asset. Crypto businesses are regulated: financial services provided by virtual asset service providers fall within the existing definition of a financial institution in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009, the Department of Internal Affairs is their lead AML/CFT supervisor and the Financial Markets Authority supervises a few of them depending on the services provided.

What the contract is

A perpetual on SP500 tracks price and does not confer ownership of the underlying — the same contract mechanics apply in every jurisdiction; what differs by country is legal status and funding rails.

Sign up on Canborsa with email, X or a wallet

No document upload to open the account. Canborsa is non-custodial: your collateral stays under your own keys until a position opens.

Email X Wallet

Fund the account with USDC

Deposit USDC over Canton, Robinhood Chain, Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain or Arbitrum. Canborsa takes no fiat, so buying the USDC happens wherever you normally buy stablecoins.

→Robinhood Chain

Open SP500-PERP

Pick SP500 in the markets list. The ticket shows the live price, the current funding rate and max leverage 30x .

SP500-PERPPerpetual · USDC marginLONG

Choose Buy / Long, then set size and leverage

Buying $1,000 of SP500 at 5x uses $200 of collateral. Higher leverage moves the liquidation price closer to your entry: your exposure is the position size, whatever margin you posted. Set a stop-loss below your entry before you walk away.

There is no crypto-specific tax rate in New Zealand. Cryptoassets are treated as a form of property, and amounts from selling, trading or exchanging them are, in most cases, taxable income — so they fall into the ordinary progressive individual income tax scale, which Inland Revenue publishes as 10.5% on income to $15,600, 17.5% to $53,500, 30% to $78,100, 33% to $180,000 and 39% above $180,000 from 1 April 2025.

Trading S&P 500 from New Zealand: legal.

From New Zealand, you can fund an S&P 500 position using Debit or credit card (NZD).

19 platforms serve New Zealand for S&P 500 trading, among them Aevo, ApeX and Avantis.

Canborsa offers up to 30x leverage on S&P 500 for traders based in New Zealand.

Canborsa charges 0.07% per side (0.14% round trip) on S&P 500.