Legal Update

The Legal Team is mutating, it is growing, and it is ready to rock on!

Line Elodie Derungs, our current Head of Legal, has resigned to focus on personal and professional projects. Even after her departure, SwissBorg and Line Elodie will keep in close touch, and Line Elodie will serve as a legal consultant for us. Line Elodie has done a fantastic job setting up the whole SwissBorg Legal Department with the idea in mind to keep it safe from harm, be it external or internal. Her work has established a solid basis for her successor to build on.

Ardian Balaj will take-on Line Elodie’s responsibilities and lead a team of consultants to move on with the licensing processes worldwide. Ardian has been hard at work recruiting young and motivated people to build this army of lawyers! Hard work and good luck bring fantastic result: we are very proud to announce that three new junior lawyers will join us in December and assist Ardian in building the perfect in-house legal department for a startup like SwissBorg.

New Legal Hires:

Serena Fontana , a licensed Italian lawyer, she will join SwissBorg as Junior Legal Officer and work on many different aspects of contractual and corporate law, as well as deal with AML risks and requirements.

, a licensed Italian lawyer, she will join SwissBorg as Junior Legal Officer and work on many different aspects of contractual and corporate law, as well as deal with AML risks and requirements. Anda Pandrea , a research assistant, coming from the very reputable Law School of the University of Fribourg, will be our new Junior Regulatory Officer, whose role will be to assist with the organisation of the legal department, research crypto matters such as smart contracts, etc.

, a research assistant, coming from the very reputable Law School of the University of Fribourg, will be our new Junior Regulatory Officer, whose role will be to assist with the organisation of the legal department, research crypto matters such as smart contracts, etc. Julian Grech is a Maltese lawyer and licensed notary with 2 LLM from the University of Fribourg as well; he will be our bridge between Switzerland and Malta.

Malta Here We Come! This month Malta is our big news. We are delighted and relieved to have received the confirmation from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) that SwissBorg is authorised to provide services under the VFA Act during a 12 months transitory period!

We have submitted a Proof of Concept, i.e. a proof that our concept is actually working. It does NOT mean that the MFSA licenses us in Malta, and it does NOT mean that the MFSA already supervises us. What it means is that we will be able to deploy our services during the next 12 months, while requesting the real VFA license during this period. What it means is that we have convinced the MFSA that our products are in development and that SwissBorg is a serious player in this new game!

Caledo will be our VFA Agent and is in the process of being authorised as such by the MFSA. Informal discussions with Maltese lawyers lead to the first Agents authorisation around March 2019. The moment Caledo reaches this authorisation, we will launch the proper VFA licensing process. Patience and hard work. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to comply with the VFA Act requirements. And kick off the licensing process to obtain a broker/dealer!

Japan: November has also been busy on the legal/regulatory side of Japan. We love our Japanese Community and being able to provide services to them is a project we hold dear. The Japanese team, led by Ken and Anthony, has started the hard work to get all required documentation for the Virtual Currency License file (VC License). The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is very strict and very demanding — given last year’s hacking events faced by various exchanges — when it comes to licenses issued to crypto undertakings in Japan! The benchmark is high, and so are the expectations of the FSA.

UK: We are pausing the development of the Small Electronic Money Institution in the UK and waiting for early 2019 to know the position of UK authorities regarding cryptos to determine the strategy after 30.03.2019. Even though the press shows that the UK and the EU are making significant progress towards a Brexit deal, the situation remains very unclear as to the conditions under which this deal will come to life; and they still have a long way to go.

Our lawyers in the UK will, therefore, focus on Intellectual Property (IP), to protect SwissBorg.

Once the situation is clearer on the crypto side as well as the Brexit side, we will reconsider the best options available to serve our British Community, be it from Malta or in the UK itself.

Switzerland: Legal issues, when it comes to Blockchain and cryptos, are still very vivid. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are still part of our everyday life as crypto lawyers. More than ever, it is important to build alliances, gather people around pressing topics, be they regulatory, tax-related or any other legal matters, to discuss, to exchange, to dispute, to do something!

SwissBorg Japan

Mark Tanser joins us as a Senior Operations Management Consultant. He will be assisting with the FSA license application process and set up of the organisational and risk management structure of the Tokyo Office. Previously, Mark ran an FX derivatives retail trading business in Tokyo, obtaining a Type 1 Financial Instruments Business license (Japanese broker-dealer license)and setting up IT systems and operations. He has extensive experience as a derivatives trader with expertise in exotic options and structured products.

Haoran “Harry” Zhang joins us as a content management intern. Harry will be responsible for the translation of SwissBorg content into Japanese and Mandarin, as well as assisting Amber with community management in China. Please welcome Mark and Harry to the Tokyo Team!

Alex Fazel Reports from Legal Tech Tokyo Event

Thanks to the well-received SB presentation at the BU event in October, Alex Fazel, our Head of Communication, was invited to deliver the same content, but, entirely in Japanese this time in front of the tier-one law firms and financial institutions. The event “was eye-opening as many of the more traditional players had very little knowledge about crypto assets but seemed very intrigued about our smart wallet. Several visitors came back to our booth to ask us when the Japanese version of the SwissBorg app will be available.”