In the last few years Switzerland became one of the
world's leading hubs for initial coin offerings. This raised
questions on how ICOs shall be treated from a Swiss regulatory
standpoint. In an attempt to address such concerns the Swiss
Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA recently issued a
series of publications aimed at providing transparency regarding
its approach to this new way of fundraising. Most importantly, this
February FINMA issued guidelines for enquiries regarding the
regulatory framework for initial coin offerings (the
"Guidelines").
1. Introduction
In the recent past, business models based on distributed ledger
and blockchain technologies successfully attracted the crowd's
as well as seasoned investors' attention. And own experience as
well as various studies show that Switzerland plays a dominant role
when it comes to fundraising by means of ICOs. This is due to
different factors such as "home-grown" DLT and blockchain
based business ideas
