In Switzerland, new legal provisions on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) came into force on February 1st. Once implemented, two local companies announced that they had issued the first token asset under the brand new law.
A ‘Fine Wine’ token is available for customers of Sygnum Bank
According to the announcement, the Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum and Fine Wine Capital AG have launched collectable premium tokens with wine support, making them the first to comply with the new blockchain rules.
Assets token via the Sygnum platform Desygnate are legally recorded under a new category of securities based on general ledger. According to the Digital Asset Bank, the “Fine Wine” token is available for Sygnum customers in the “Art & Collectibles” category.
The “Federal Act on the Adaptation of Federal Law to Developments in Distributed Ledger Technology” enables companies to develop a framework that links ownership of financial and real assets with a DLT-based asset token.
Alexandre Challand, co-founder of Fine Wine Capital, went into more detail about how the new rules will benefit investors:
By tokenizing wine wealth, we can expand our private collector investor base to include new private and institutional investors interested in a fraction of the ownership of certain properties. This gives them the ability to hold, trade, or request physical settlement of this unique asset in an efficient manner.
Gino Wirthensohn, Head of Regtech at Sygnum Bank, is also of the opinion that new legal provisions represent a “legally viable alternative to traditional securitization”.
Current cases of tokenized assets
Asset tokenization is sustaining the growing trend across a variety of markets. Coreledger recently announced that they would be working with Abakus to build a “digital exchange economy” in Argentina.
The project is to give farmers the option to label their agricultural assets to hedge against rising inflation. If so, Argentine farmers could redeem their token titles via the Akabus P2P platform and trade other assets.
In Russia, one of the world’s largest palladium producers, Nornickel, announced in December 2020 that it had started the first phase of digital coin issuance with metal contracts.
The Russian mining giant indicated that its first-tier tokens will be tied to palladium, cobalt, copper mining and exploration.
What do you think of this tokenization of Swiss premium wines? Let us know in the comments below.
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