On 27 April 2023, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) released a second consultation regarding the taxation of transactions in the Decentralised Finance (DeFi) market. In short, HMRC proposes to legislate to ensure that the use of cryptoassets in certain DeFi transactions would no longer give rise to a taxable disposal, but instead would trigger taxation only when the assets are economically disposed of in a non-DeFi transaction. This is a significant step for HMRC and the UK…
On November 30, 2018, the Federal Council (the highest executive authority of Switzerland) published the implementing rules governing the newly introduced Swiss “innovator license.” The Swiss Parliament has recently enacted this new license category. Younger companies, in particular from the fintech and blockchain space, often engage in taking deposits from the public. Until recently, this activity was reserved for banks. However, fintechs that operate payment systems, including such systems based on cryptocurrencies or other blockchain…