Zug, Switzerland proves an unlikely setting for the centre of cryptocurrency
Switzerland is Europe’s most cosmopolitan nation, although its geography should make it the most closed. This is a paradox rooted in finance, and the situation is getting weirder. The European hub of cryptocurrency is not London or Paris, but Zug.
I travelled to Zug last month to attend a launch of SEBA Crypto, which hopes to get a Swiss banking licence next year to offer accounts in state-issued money as well as crypto, bridging the two. It is a small town that nestles on a lake, in a bucolic valley of green fields and clonking cow bells, a short and winding train ride from Zurich (itself hardly a pulsating metropolis).
Rather than the self-effacing rustic types one might expect to find in a place like this, a craft ale-swigging crowd from the four corners of the earth greets me. I only managed to get to Seba’s chief executive Guido Buehler after a battle with the firm’s vociferous New York-raised chief marketing officer, Morgan Pierce.
