Legal regulation of crypto assets in Switzerland

Abstract

The development of cryptocurrency markets make the investors to seek for most convenient jurisdictions from the perspective of legal regulation. The countries commonly associated with the developed financial legal systems are often fasten attention. One of such financial hubs is Switzerland, which just starts to form the approaches towards creation of legal regime for operations with virtual assets. The subject of this research is the Swiss legal acts in area of securities, licensing, taxes related to regulation of cryptocurrency, as well as reports of the supervisory authorities for Swiss financial market on the matter. The object of this research is the legal framework for regulation of mining activity. The authors examine the rules dedicated ti the questions of licensing of the activity related to operations with different types of tokens. Special attention is given to the question of taxation of the income received from operations with cryptocurrencies. The author’s special contribution consists in comprehensive analysis of foreign sources presented on the three European languages. Having analyzed the legislation of Switzerland, the conclusion is made that similar to many developed countries, Switzerland has not created a complex regulation of operations with cryptocurrencies. At the same time, the normative acts that regulate certain aspects of circulation of crypto assets, such as fund raising in terms of tokens distribution and taxation have been adopted. Regulation of crypto assets often depends on the qualification of different types of tokens, in other words, their regime is consigned to the operations with such assets that are most similar to the corresponding type. The increase of operations with crypto assets will soon inevitably result in creation of a more accurate legal regime