Marc P. Bernegger is one of the people who advises the Swiss economics minister on Bitcoin, and he describes his home nation as the most favorable place in the world to be in the cryptocurrency business.

Bernegger is a Swiss-born serial entrepreneur focused on financial technology. It didn’t take long after the emergence of the blockchain in 2009 for him to focus specifically on cryptocurrency, where he’s maintained meaningful business involvement since 2012. In the same way that decentralization makes cryptocurrency uniquely useful around the world, the residents of Switzerland benefit from the decentralized principles that drive the country’s tax code. Someone living just outside of Zurich could pay a fraction of the city’s notorious tax while enjoying comparable access to the Swiss capital.

“We have a unique federalistic system that sees the national state — that is, the federal states and its individual counties — compete against each other. This is very healthy for an efficient and transparent government,” Bernegger said over a late morning coffee in Zurich. “Additionally, our direct democratic system gives a lot of power to the people, so politicians and their parties have far less influence than in most other democratic countries.”

The Swiss people seem to be willing cryptocurrency into power as the new normal. Popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether are effectively units of mathematical abstraction, and if you’d like to trade in them, Switzerland’s existing regulations are extremely favorable for businesses and people alike. At a time where global sentiment has “downright illegal” at one end of the spectrum, cryptocurrency is hip in Switzerland.

“Lichtenstein, Gibraltar, and Malta are doing a good job, but they’re latecomers when it comes to blockchain-related regulation,” Bernegger said. “Switzerland is still ahead of the curve, and this is backed by hard numbers like money raised via ICOs.”

Initial coin offerings are fundraising vehicles built on cryptocurrency principles, and they’re getting extremely popular these days. A company seeking new investment can issue its own crypto-token and sell it en masse to investors, something akin to a company going public by selling shares of stock. The global ICO market broke records last year, generating some $4 billion in 2017. ICOs originating in Switzerland captured 14 percent of whole, some $550 million. With lots of countries slicing the crypto-cake lots of different ways, Switzerland might be holding the biggest piece.

Bernegger advises the Switzerland-based crypto real estate company SwissRealCoin, which pegs the value of its cryptocurrency to Swiss commercial real estate. As the country’s real estate prices are poised to generally increase, says Credit Suisse, so to will the value of the company’s SRC token. Each unit represents a sort of “share” of Swiss commercial properties that the company purchases.

Bernegger’s star seems poised to rise directly with cryptocurrency. When he’s not offering advice to Switzerland-based crypto-entrepreneurs, he’s playing an advisory role to the Swiss federal government as a member of the country’s "blockchain taskforce." Beyond that, he’s a member of the board of the Crypto Finance Conference, as well as at Crypto Finance Group, a financial services business for big fish crypto-investors.

Despite favorable conditions, the Swiss cryptocurrency industry faces a real challenge: talent acquisition.

“Switzerland is a very expensive place to be,” Bernegger said. “Talent acquisition is tough for young companies because they compete against powerful players and high-paying banks. Google maintains its second-largest headquarters in Zurich, for example.”

Swiss economics minister Johann Schneider-Ammann made some extremely favorable statements in January about his desire to see attention shift away from “Crypto Valley Zug” (something like a cryptocurrency-focused Silicon Valley in Switzerland), and instead hear more talk about “crypto nation Switzerland.”

While it’s hard for new, upstart companies to pay competitive salaries in Switzerland, the Swiss government generally seems won over by the blockchain; it perhaps wants to lead the way now that there’s no getting rid of it.