Group items tagged

The Swiss canton of Zug now allows local companies and indivduals to pay taxes in crypto-assets Bitcoin and Ethereum. Local crypto broker Bitcoin Suisse enabled the new opportunity in partnership with the canton. Zug initially announced its plans to accept crypto for tax payment in September 2020. https://www.zg.ch/behoerden/finanzdirektion/steuerverwaltung/zahlen-mit-kryptowaehrungen

Digital Asset published the results of its U.S. Treasury (UST) Collateral Network Pilot that focused on leveraging DLT applications to support market connectivity across the collateral management lifecycle to enhance mobility, liquidity and transactional efficiency of tokenized assets. The tests involved four investors, four banks, two central counterparties, three custodians/collateral agents, and a central securities depository operating fourteen Canton Network nodes, that connected four types of cross-application transactions through ten distributed applications, leveraging DTCC's LedgerScan solution to support dynamic tracking and governance of the assets involved in the pilot transactions. Participants successfully executed 100 transactions. https://www.canton.network/unlocking-collateral-mobility-through-tokenization

The Canton of Zurich issued a CHF 100 million digital bond via the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) that will settle on December 1, 2023 using a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) issued by the Swiss National Bank (SNB), marking the launch of the SNB's Project Helvetia pilot. The pilot will run to June 2024, and according to the SNB "does not constitute a commitment on its part to introduce wholesale CBDC on a permanent basis. Rather, the SNB aims to test the various models for settling tokenized assets". https://www.snb.ch/en/publications/communication/press-releases/2023/pre_20231102

December 1, 2023 saw the world's first commercial settlements of digital securities transactions with real wholesale CBDC on a regulated distributed ledger technology (DLT) based financial market infrastructure (SDX). One was a CHF 105 million franc digital four-year bond issued by the Canton of Basel-Stadt, and the second was a CHF 100 million digital 11-year bond issued by the Canton of Zurich. The wholesale CBDC was issued by the Swiss National Bank as part of Helvetia III. In addition to the settlement on the SDX platform, part of the settlement took place on SIX SIS, the national central securities depository (CSD) of the Swiss financial market and an International Central Securities Depository (ICSD), which runs a node on SDX.

The Canton Network, launched in May 2023 completed its exploration of a privacy-enabled open blockchain network for real-time atomic settlement and immediate reconciliation across counterparty systems of tokenized investment asset transactions. Based on more than 350 simulated transactions, the project proved that the blockchain could be leveraged to streamline and synchronize financial applications while at the same time adhering to regulatory asset control, security, and data privacy requirements. It involved 15 asset managers, 13 banks, four custodians, three exchanges, and one financial market infrastructure provider. It exchanged tokenized securities, money market funds and deposits across 22 decentralized applications (dApps).

Digital Asset completed a pilot to tokenize U.K. Gilts, Eurobonds and gold on the distributed ledger technology (DLT) based Canton Network, which provided interoperability between separate DLT networks that have deployed Digital Asset's technology. The aim was to demonstrate how tokenized assets on a blockchain can enhance collateral mobility, improve liquidity, and increase transactional efficiency. The pilot involved Euroclear, the World Gold Council and 27 market participants. Five types of cross-application transactions were connected using eleven distributed applications, including six registry apps and five margin apps, with 500 transactions completed.

By some definitions, this move makes bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) legal tender. From next February, citizens and companies based in Zug will be able to pay up to CHF100,000 of their taxes in either BTC or ETH. No partial payments in crypto-assets will be accepted. For the initiative, authorities have partnered with the Zug-based crypto broker and custodian Bitcoin Suisse, which will convert crypto-asset payments into Swiss francs and hand them over to the tax office.