We were joined by Luka Mueller, who played a key role in establishing Switzerland as a cryptocurrency center and in laying the legal groundwork for the ICO boom. In 2014, his law firm MME worked with the Ethereum team to set up the Ethereum Foundation and run its public fundraiser. A model that was later copied by countless other projects and led MME to work with many other leading protocols like Cosmos and Tezos.

We also discussed his new project Sygnum, a cryptocurrency-focused bank. Nearly every company that works in the cryptocurrency space has had problems with its banking partner. Legal uncertainty, lack of knowledge, or simple unwillingness to work with cryptocurrency companies has made this a frequent nightmare for companies in this emerging sector. With a presence in both Switzerland and Singapore, Sygnum aims to fill a piece of missing infrastructure in the crypto-ecosystem: a bank that is able to receive, hold and transfer protocol tokens while offering a secure fiat gateway to easily transfer from the old world of finance to the new.

We also discussed Switzerland’s regulatory environment and why it is able to provide more regulatory clarity.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What life was like for Luka before blockchain
• How Luka met Vitalik and went on to set up the Ethereum Foundation and run their fundraiser
• What protocols his law firm, MME, helped launch
• The lessons learned over the years, and how he would do it differently
• Why Switzerland is a great jurisdiction for crypto projects
• What Luka thinks of asset-backed tokens
• What is Sygum, and why did he decide to start a crypto bank
• What Luke believes will happen when the tech giants release their own currencies
• The difference between Sygnum and similar banks
• What Luka's fears are in the space, and what he is hopeful for

Episode links:

• MME Law Firm
• Sygnum Website
• Institutional Custody: A Portal to the Digital Asset Economy (Sygnum Blog)
• How Tokenization is Closing the Gap Between Public and Private Markets (Sygnum Blog)
• Sygnum gets green light to operate in Singapore (SwissInfo)
• Switzerland’s first crypto bank reports “overwhelming” demand (Decrypt)
• Sygnum on Twitter

Sponsors:

• eToro: Automatically copy every trade of eToro's top crypto traders at the exact price in real-time - https://www.etoro.com/
• Cosmos: Compete to win 100,000 ATOM by building and running Cosmos Zones - https://cosmos.network/goz/

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/316