Switzerland: Regulation for Capital Markets, Cryptocurrency and Banking Licenses

At the international level, the framework is being composed thanks to the indisputable initiative of Switzerland in particular that on the issues of the new regulation for cryptocurrency / tokenization in financial markets is leading the way and laying the foundations for the construction of many experimental projects and to build those experiences that then allow to "write the actual rules".

Meanwhile, even with the skills and initiative of many Europeans, Switzerland sets the pace with the first regulation of the capital market signed by the Swiss Blockchain Federation, from the guidelines for stable coin issued by Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), from the first licenses for banking and issued securities by FINMA to two pure-play DLT providers.

A Strategic Blockchain Project

But we must not only look at Switzerland, 2019 has seen the initiative of countries that have long been preparing the groundwork for the development of Blockchain such as Estonia and Malta and others such as San Marino, Portugal and Lichtenstein. At the level of international initiatives, an important role is played by the OECD initiative that puts DLT at the heart of the Observatory on Digitalization.

The OECD's commitment is based in particular on the issues of certification of guaranteed provenance of products, that is, on a fundamental asset for many countries in Europe. And the OECD blockchain project for product certification was born to involve small and medium-sized enterprises in particular.

Libra Coin, Facebook and the Unbanked

You cannot close a 2019 budget and a 2020 perspective without mentioning the themes of tokenization and cryptocurrency. There are many projects that have characterized this dimension of blockchain innovation but one of them will allow you to understand the global perspectives of this phenomenon: Libra Association.

In the summer of 2019 the Libra project arrived and had the indisputable and extraordinary merit of bringing to the attention of policy makers and the public the possibilities of cryptocurrency. Facebook has made everyone talk, not just the experts, not just the insiders, regardless of whether they know and share the possibilities of blockchain.

There are three issues raised by Facebook and the 28 partners of the initiative on which, regardless of the upcoming developments, Libra has already achieved an important result:

1. The possibility to give life to a global currency, responding, with a private entrepreneurial initiative, to a need that comes from afar and that can find an answer in the distributed ledger tech

2. The very concrete possibility of combining three levels of innovation that few projects have had the courage and strength to face at the same time: technological innovation; monetary/financial innovation; and social innovation

3. Accessibility. Nearly two billion people are now unbanked and under normal conditions it takes years for the conditions to be created to create real access to financial services. On the contrary, in many cases they have or can have access to digital services such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger and these, thanks to Libra, could become the way to access to financial services.