Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Germany, United Kingdom

An entrepreneur based in Haute-Savoie can see Geneva from his window, reaches Luxembourg in a few hours, and deals every week with Frankfurt or London. Each of these neighbouring financial centres has built its own framework for tokenised assets, often earlier and sometimes more boldly than France. Knowing them makes it possible to choose, for each project, the jurisdiction best suited to the asset, the investors and the target market.

Switzerland

Switzerland was one of the first to grasp what was at stake. In February 2018 its supervisory authority, FINMA, published the ICO guidelines that distinguished payment, utility and asset tokens, a classification that became a world reference. Two years later, Parliament adopted a federal act on the adaptation of federal law to developments in distributed electronic register technology, known as the DLT Act, which came into force in two stages in 2021.

This act created a new category in the Code of Obligations, ledger-based securities. A right, a share, a bond or a unit can be recorded in a distributed electronic register that meets certain requirements, and can then be exercised and transferred only through that register. Switzerland thus gave the blockchain, for the securities that wish it, the legal value of a negotiable paper security. The same act created a new market infrastructure, the DLT trading facility, able to admit retail participants and to provide custody and settlement.