120 meters above Zurich – namely at "Clouds", at the top of the "Prime Tower" – Safirum launched its new franc stablecoin on Tuesday. Some 60 representatives of Swiss financial institutions, the blockchain community and the new franc token's ecosystem partners were in attendance.

It is a pioneering achievement by the team around Safirum CEO Bastien Thiébaud, who had headed the financial planner Mithras before founding the company: "CHF-S", as the stablecoin is known succinctly, is the first publicly available implementation of a stablecoin within the guardrails of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) guideline on stablecoins.

Real innovation

There is also the so-called Frankencoin, which operates as a decentralized token with a definable issuer outside the regulation of stablecoins, and the franc stablecoin issued in Germany by Allunity (finews reported). A banking consortium is also testing a franc stablecoin backed by a bank guarantee, which is still in the sandbox phase. Recently, SIX and Twint have joined this initiative (finews reported).

The bank guarantee is one of two ways in which Finma enables stablecoins. The new "CHF-S" uses the second: a user restriction to wallets that are enabled ("whitelisted") in compliance with anti-money laundering requirements. For this purpose, Safirum has joined the self-regulatory organization VQF.

Great public interest high above Zurich. (Image: provided)

Hans Kuhn as adviser, Maverix as first minter

As former Swiss National Bank chief lawyer Hans Kuhn, who advises Safirum, emphasized at the event, the stablecoin is based on an exemption under the Ordinance on Banks and Savings Banks, according to which deposits from qualified investors with professional treasury operations are not considered public deposits. In other words: Only institutional investors whose treasury operation requires at least one full-time position qualify as minters.

The securities house Maverix emerged as the first minter. Co-founder and co-CEO Giuliano Glocker sees the new stablecoin as a foundation for "new applications, especially for our clients and the management of digital assets in our AMCs." Working with the Safirum team has been a great pleasure, he said.

Applications demonstrated live

According to reports, the first 10,000 francs were issued in "CHF-S" yesterday, and the use cases were presented live on site: transfers in milliseconds and even point-of-sale transactions from wallet to wallet, settled within 1.5 seconds, at virtually no cost.

Specifically mentioned were cross-border payments between companies, treasury management, the settlement of transactions on crypto exchanges and payments related to tokenized assets. So far, turning digital assets back into francs has often required going through several fiat currencies and intermediaries. The new stablecoin makes this path radically simpler and cheaper, said the Safirum CEO.

A currency with intrinsic value for the digital realm

Biographically, he drew on his previous role as a financial planner: Even his Swiss clients had repeatedly needed to be reminded of the franc's unique intrinsic value over time.

With a token issued in Switzerland, the aim is now to ensure that the world's fifth-largest currency by trading volume also makes the leap into digital assets; the stablecoin space has so far been 99 percent dominated by the dollar.

Berner Kantonalbank and Banque Richelieu as custodians

The "CHF-S" is backed 100 percent by bank accounts that Safirum holds with Berner Kantonalbank and Banque Richelieu. Wallet holders transfer the equivalent amount there on a 1:1 basis. Additional custodian banks are expected to follow, according to the press release.

Only last week, the Swiss Bankers Association presented an in-depth paper on stablecoins and called for regulatory easing (finews reported). Kuhn also described the regulatory proposal currently under discussion at the "CHF-S" launch as "cumbersome".