While the Bank for International Settlement / Basel Committee on Banking Supervision continues to propose regulation, they also have developed a habit of not addressing legitimate concerns from the community. That is highly regrettable, but no reason to throw in the towel. So the Bitcoin Association Switzerland continues to provide constructive feedback and - so we think - well argued suggestions on how to improve on the longterm goals of the BIS to make the space safer and allow for more innovation.
The letter we sent out this week is continuing this tradition.
Agavon, a company that provides consulting services to help companies determine whether blockchain technology and other forms of distributed ledger technology (DLT) is right for their needs or not, as well as provides complementary software products, has decided to join the Bitcoin Association Switzerland as a corporate member.
Today we are introducing Bravis. As one of their first official actions, the freshly founded company joined our association as a corporate member earlier this month.
Bravis stands for Brave Visions: Their vision is to enable every person to successfully invest in digital assets. Bravis aims to achieve this through three pillars: Asset Management, consulting, and events.
Just when you thought that Crypto Finance AG could not top their stream of positive news today, they have another ace up their sleeve: they are joining the BAS as corporate member!
'The Cryptos Fund' is a new, regulated fund offering a passive index tracking investment strategy on cryptocurrencies. The company was founded by a team of investors, academics and security experts. It is designed to passively replicate the Crypto Currencies Index (CCI30), an indicator of crypto currencies valuations (just as the S&P 500 is an indicator of stock price valuations), and a benchmark for the sector
With the immens interest in Bitcoin from asset managers, family offices and private banks as well as private investors, there are many new players picking up this opportunity. One of them is our latest corporate member Coinlab Capital AG, a startup based in the Crypto Valley with the ambition to become the leading investment manager in crypto assets.
I'm very excited to announce that Blockstream, one of the most respected companies in Bitcoin, joins the Bitcoin Association Switzerland as a corporate member. By supporting local community activities in Switzerland and other places in the world, Blockstream shows its commitment for decentralization in all aspects of Bitcoin.
Setting up a legal entity without ever touching fiat money: using Bitcoin for contributions in kind, paying your accountant or auditor. All that is possible in Zug, Switzerland. One of the first companies to offer those services for Bitcoin is our latest corporate member, wadsack treuhandgesellschaft.
SwissBorg is a smart-contract based banking backbone with the objective to create a democratic, decentralized and professional ecosystem to manage crypto asset portfolios. SwissBorg is designed and built with a strong community-focus and -values at their core, being fully owned by the community, and fostering community contribution in design and development of their solutions.
Wemakeit - a Swiss crowd-funding platform founded in 2012 - connects startups and investors to fund and realise innovative projects and business ideas across a multitude of topics and at global scale. The 3000 already launched and financed projects range from humanitarian endeavours to innovative new technology and applications and arts and fashion. Wemakeit collaborates and channels through well-known organisations such as ImpactHub, Mobiliar Insurance, local governments and others. Having cast a wide network with local offices across Europe the company offers their skills, expertise and advice to project teams personally as well as digitally. The unique founder team from communications, artistic and designer backgrounds has managed to turn wemakeit into one of Europe's biggest and leading crowdfunding solutions.
The Zurich-based company Mindliner designs and develops a fair, lean content sharing system for corporations and individuals. Their product is a concept software for idea and information categorisation, multitasking, multi-stakeholder management and the handling of various categories of data. It is Mindliner's objective to streamline business processes by combatting and easing issues like information overload, centralization and manipulation which result from an increasingly digitised world and business environment.
There is some confusion on how the Bitcoin Association Switzerland is set up, what its goals are, and who is in charge. I hope this blog post will help clarifying this.
The Bitcoin Association Switzerland is one of the oldest and most active non-profit associations around the topic of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Since 2013, we’ve been organizing free social and educational events with the number of attendees ranging from a humble dozen to several hundreds. We have been assisting in the resolvement of legal issues and law making, and we educate the broader public by providing a contact point for media inquiries as well as face to face with anyone interested at our regular meetups.
I’d like to start with our bylaws:
Art. 1 Objective
(1) Objective of the Association is to promote digital currencies.
Everything we do is within this objective: the promotion of digital currencies.
Like Switzerland itself, the BAS has a democratic, grassroot setup. There is no king but a board of six individuals elected by our members, representing different opinions within the community, not unlike the Swiss Federal Council. This setup ensures that all voices of the community are heard and nobody gets left behind. Even though individual board members might not agree with all the decisions made within the board, they are represented as one to the outside.
This worked very well so far and kept our community together, as well as open minded and served as an encouragement to discuss different points of view.
The association's stance on topics such as the scaling debate is to remain neutral, as confirmed on the last general assembly.
The BAS is run by enthusiasts contributing their free time. If someone wants to promote digital currencies and needs help of the association (for example by promoting an event through our meetup.com group) they can ask any member of the board for support. If the board considers the request to be within the rules of our bylaws, the support will be granted.
One of the most important pillars of the Bitcoin Association and our local community are our regular events. Since 2011 there are Bitcoin meetups in Switzerland, since 2013 they are taking place at least once a month (now 2-4 times per month) and since 2014 we also had the privilege of hosting high profile speakers regularly.
Our community is very keen on learning the technological, business, political and legal aspects of Bitcoin. Therefore we endeavor to get the best speakers possible, covering many areas within and around Bitcoin.
In the past we had the following speakers:
Pieter Wuille, Christian Decker, Andreas Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, Brian Hoffman, Pamela Morgan, Jonas Nick, Zach & Josh Harvey, Thomas Voegtlin, Mike Hearn, Paul Puey, Jimmy Song, Chris Odom, Tone Vays, and a few others. Most of the talks can be found on our YouTube channel.
Some of the speakers are provoking for one side of the community, some for the others. Often we have heated but civilized discussions, but even when we’re disagreeing on the how, we share the same goals.
Our self-thinking and critical community is very keen to hear all opinions and to passionately discuss different viewpoints.
I hope this helps clarifying things. If you’d like to get in touch with us or share your opinion on the topic please contact us via email (you can find our email addresses here) or comment below.
To the moon!
Lucas
President Bitcoin Association Switzerland
Update 6th October 2017:
We removed the names of some previous speakers on their request as they don't want to be associated with an organisation that hosts an event with a highly controversial figure. One of those speakers gave a passionate talk against censorship.
Finance 2.0, the organizer of Switzerlands biggest Fintech, Crypto, InsurTech and WealthTech conferences (yup, that's several conferences not all wrapped into one!) continues its mission of building up and supporting the innovative, local ecosystem in Switzerland by joining the Bitcoin Association. As early as 2014, well before Bitcoin was hitting main stream media outlets, they were already accepting payment in Bitcoin. This was, fittingly, for Switzerland's first conference about the revolutionary topic of crypto in finance (not counting our own events, of course).
Everyone knows Bitcoin is the hottest topic in finance right now - and Switzerland is leading. We're happy to see more and more startups as well as traditional companies starting to offer financial products based on crypto currencies. One of them is our latest corporate member DECOM Investments.
Bitcoin, Blockchain, Crypto Currencies - the field is big and gets bigger and bigger everyday. It might also be confusing at first, but beside our community there are valuable consulting companies happy to help you in your crypto adventures. One of them is our latest corporate member Jud Schöni & Partner AG.
We are happy to announce that ShapeShift, one of the best known and respected brands within the crypto currency world, joins our association as a corporate member.
ShapeShift was the first platform to provide instant Bitcoin and altcoin conversions, or as they describe themselves:
“ShapeShift is the fastest and safest digital asset exchange in the world. From start to finish, users can exchange blockchain tokens in seconds, with no account required. The firm pioneered the concept of “Consumer Protection by Design”, enabling web and API-based trading without counterparty risk.”
With the company being incorporated in Zug, Switzerland, it was a natural next step for ShapeShift to support our cause with a corporate membership. Please join us in welcoming ShapeShift as a member of our association!
