Sygnum Bank have become the first regulated Swiss bank to launch a digital stablecoin (DCHF) pegged to the Swiss Franc (CHF). For every DCHF minted, Sygnum will store the equivalent sum of fiat currency as collateral in the Swiss National Bank.
The stablecoin will act as a settlement token using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to transfer value faster and more efficiently than conventional transactions.
The Bank are confident that “The settlement token framework and technology developed for Sygnum’s DCHF can be replicated with other major national currencies.”
Digital Asset Bank
Zurich-based Sygnum, who claim to be the world’s first Digital Asset Bank, hold a capital markets services licence in Singapore and were granted a banking licence by Switzerland’s independent financial markets regulator (FINMA) in August 2019.
At that time, Sygnum’s Co-founder and CEO, Manuel Krieger, told Fintechnews that he saw the licence as “…an important step towards the institutionalisation of the digital asset economy.”
Part of Sygnum’s vision is to enable corporations to raise new capital by tokenising their existing financial assets and a digital Swiss Franc is seen to be a necessary component in building a seamless bridge between the fiat and digital worlds.
As Markus Hartmann, Sygnum Bank’s Head of Tokenisation, now explains “The Sygnum DCHF is an integral part of our tokenisation offering, facilitating settlement of transactions and execution of smart contract payment structures, for example dividend pay-outs and other corporate actions.”
Currently, fiat deposits into Sygnum accounts can be made in CHF, EUR, SGD and USD and customers have the option of buying, trading or storing digital assets and cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.
