Crypto Exchange and Custodian Smart Valor Goes Live in Switzerland

Smart Valor has secured a fresh $3.25 million round of investment, led by Venture Incubator, alongside Tally Capital and other Asian and U.S. investors.

With the news, the Zug-based startup is also announcing a new exchange operating from both Switzerland and Liechtenstein that will provide custody, trading and brokerage services. Initially, the exchange will offer BTC and ETH, each of which can trade against the fiat currencies CHF, EUR, GBP and USD.

Smart Valor CEO Olga Feldmeier told CoinDesk in an email:

Smart Valor was approved as a regulated financial intermediary in Switzerland late last year. Venture Incubator is a joint initiative of ETH Zurich and consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and has backing from 10 of Switzerland's most significant companies.

With the basic exchange now live, more tokens will be added monthly, with the goal of making it a leading exchange for security tokens backed by real-world assets, the company said in a press release.

“While hundreds of exchanges were created during the last several years, today there are just about a dozen which are legal, compliant, licensed and safe,” Smart Valor investor David Johnston said in a statement. "Switzerland, being at the top of the hierarchy of financially savvy but crypto-friendly jurisdictions, needs its own Coinbase."

The exchange's launch is accompanied by a campaign that gives initial users fee-free trading and brokerage services during the first three months. Not surprisingly, the full capacity of the early access program has been taken up by 5,000 users registered on the platform prior to today’s launch.

Feldmeier said in a release:

Smart Valor CEO Olga Feldmeier image via CoinDesk archives