The Blockchain Act: new business for the entire sector

Since their introduction, Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs) have become a significant component of the European financial market. As a structured product, legally classified as debt securities, they hold a counterparty risk for the investor that is comparable with other structured financial products. AMCs are securitised, which gives the holder the right to cash repayment or the delivery of an underlying asset. As the buyer, the investor becomes a creditor of the issuer and thus dependent in terms of the type and amount of repayment, which is subject to different parameters.

Liechtenstein has a long-standing tradition in the fields of banking and asset management. Since joining the EEA in 1995, Liechtenstein’s financial centre has established itself as a professional point of reference for promoters of collective investment vehicles on the European financial market.

Ever since the dawn of time, human beings have hunted and gathered, collecting the things they discovered and making them their own. This was when the concept of ownable assets first emerged, albeit in rudimentary form. Since then, assets have evolved and become more complex as humans have found more reliable ways to connect assets to people. Today, people enter into legal contracts when transferring assets.

Foundational technology is the most effective tool for impacting society at large and solving the challenges it is faced with. One such foundational institutional technology is the blockchain, which entered the picture through the discovery of Bitcoin in 2009 and has since proliferated and emerged in many different forms.

What does blockchain’s social impact look like?

The blockchain industry has experienced significant growth in the last couple of years as one unicorn after another sprouts from the soil that grows crypto start-ups. In this new series of blog posts and webinars, we take a closer look at the technology and explore why it is so successful and why everybody is talking about it. We also look beyond the speculative aspect that blockchain is so frequently associated with and focus on the real-world problems that the technology is poised to solve.

Mit zunehmender Selbstverständlichkeit fragen immer mehr Kunden nach Dienstleistungen rund um Kryptowährungen. Für Finanzintermediäre eröffnet diese Nachfrage neue Geschäftsmöglichkeiten. Um das Potenzial heben zu können, müssen die Akteure aber auch das Spezialwissen zur Verfügung haben.

As one of its major use cases, blockchain technology is said to transform traditional correspondent banking. So far major challenges have pushed back this transformation. It is more likely than ever that with central bank digital currencies on the horizon; blockchain disruption will finally come to fruition in the realm of cross-border banking.

With Ethereum upgrading to Proof of Stake, the crypto world is going through one of its most transformative shifts to date. This means that customers will soon be able to earn interest on their digital asset holdings through a process called staking. What staking is, how it will define the future of Ethereum and digital asset custody at large is explained in this article.

In this in-depth article, the authors show the economic and regulatory environment in which banks in Liechtenstein operate. This article first appeared in the reference work The Banking Regulation Review (Twelfth Edition) published by Law Business Resarch.