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The same proves for the cottage industry sprung up around crypto including conferences, law firms to help setting up Swiss foundations, consultants, and hedge funds. All are demonstrably making money – whether they are fostering the type of lofty advancements to society they like to claim for themselves, beyond a well-encrypted database, remains to be seen.

And who exactly is making money from the crypto boom: it may be a coincidence that only small to tiny banks have opened themselves up to crypto accounts. If there were great sums to be be earned in crypto, then rest assured major banks would have muscled into the asset class by now.

Ostensibly Stable

Even ostensibly solid blockchain-based experiments have been foundered: a small-cap project which Zuercher Kantonalbank took a stake in, and which received state backing, fizzled.

The technology around a smart bond launched by UBS three years ago met a similar fate: this fall, the bank merged Batavia, a trade financing blockchain platform, into the larger We.trade consortium. The move is an admission that UBS gauges the venture's prospects as more favorably in someone else's hands. 

Targeted Successes

Against this backdrop, the slew of Swiss finance blockchain firms have yet to prove that they can fulfil the hopes instilled in them. Behind the finance hype, several insurance-based projects are quietly advancing.

They include start-up B3i, which got its start in Zurich's Trust Square. Insurer Axa is working with IT firm Adnovum on an automotive app to secure data on the blockchain.

Few Specifics

By contrast, projects seeking to tie up securities and instruments on the blockchain are far less specific. Swisscom's Daura venture is meant to launch a crypto share by April, though the project's boss Peter Schnuerer cautioned recently that much remains to be done before then.

A blockchain project authored by Switzerland's stock exchange operator SIX is at the beginning of its work. The timing of larger projects at UBS and Credit Suisse is unknown: for example in trade finance, consortium loans, or a digital currency called a utility coin.

The next months will be decisive on whether the hype can be backed up – or if Switzerland's finance industry is headed for the trough of disillusionment.