Against the backdrop of the growing number of projects for so-called “stable coins” since mid-2018, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) on 11 September 2019 published new guidelines explaining the regulatory qualification of tokens that are linked to underlying assets such as fiat currency, commodities or securities with the goal to minimise fluctuations in their market value. The new guidelines supplement FINMA’s ICO Guidelines of 16 February 2018, which continue to apply. While the stable coin guidelines are general in nature, their publication coincides with the recent announcement by the Swiss based Libra Association to launch a payment token that is backed by a basket of fiat currencies, a project that has attracted worldwide attention by governments and regulators.

By Martin Peyer / Gadi Winter (Reference: CapLaw-2019-43)