The first part of Switzerland’s two-phase blockchain and crypto regulatory framework has gone into effect. The law covering company reforms was implemented on Monday, thus turning the country into the few that have codified digital assets into law.
The second phase will be implemented in August this year, and it will include financial market infrastructure upgrades. According to Swissinfo, this will help improve the nation’s blockchain and crypto scene.
The law will open the doors to a digital and crypto securities industry that is fully regulated, enabling all those who participate in it to understand their position and the risks involved.
The Blockchain Law passed through the House of Representatives in the summer of 2020, facing no opposition. Soon after this, in September, the country’s parliament passed a set of reforms to the corporate and financial law, including an expanded regulatory framework for crypto and blockchain technology in Switzerland.
Heinz Tännler, the president of the Swiss Blockchain Federation, stated at that time that:
FINMA Licenses
It didn’t take long for the industry to react to these recent events. On Monday, Crypto Finance announced that its Crypto Broker AG subsidiary had secured a license from the Swiss financial regulator FINMA.
The brokerage firm cleared over $1 billion in trades in 2020, and, thanks to this license, it can now offer new services and products to its clients, including tokenized securities.
Crypto Broker AG is not the only firm to hold this license, though, since SEBA and Sygnum Bank secured such licenses in 2019. Bitcoin Suisse, Lykke, Taurus, and SDX are also among those interested in becoming holders of the FINMA license.
The second phase of the Blockchain law planned for August will cover major upgrades to the Swiss financial market infrastructure, providing legal backing for crypto securities trading and other crypto exchange operations.
As a result of these legislative changes, a new license category will be created for distributed ledger technology (DLT) exchanges.