Switzerland dangles carrot for crypto exchanges

The award of a trading license to the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) coincides with a regulatory backlash against crypto exchanges around the world. For cryptocurrency enthusiasts, the writing is on the wall: the nimble upstarts may have gained a head start but centralised regulators are queuing up to pull them back. Some of these crypto exchanges are blazing a trail into new financial territory – branching out from pure cryptocurrency trading into areas like staking, lending and listing DLT securities, such as blockchain-compliant versions of company shares. This has brought the likes of Coinbase, Binance and Poloniex into conflict with regulators, particularly the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “I believe we have a crypto market now where many tokens may be unregistered securities,” SEC chairman Gary Gensler recently said. “This leaves prices open to manipulation. This leaves investors vulnerable.” Could Switzerland provide the answer? At first glance this seems...