> arrangements are being made to incorporate a nonprofit for Ethereum in the legal free-for-all of Switzerland
Swiss Law might be a bit idiosyncratic but I would hardly call it a "legal free-for-all".
Swiss Law might be a bit idiosyncratic but I would hardly call it a "legal free-for-all".
The general four categories of options that we had are:
(i) a traditional banking/tax haven (Isle of Man, Panama, etc)
(ii) Switzerland
(iii) Iceland
(iv) Singapore / some other "Asian tiger"
The reason we discarded (i), aside from reputational concerns, is that such jurisdictions tend to be unstable; they are nice to you right up until the US government wants them to stop being nice to you, at which point they flop over in ten seconds. (iii), while nice for other crypto-startups, is bad here because there is unfortunately a hostile legal environment for cryptocurrency. The choice between (ii) and (iv) is arbitrary; both categories of jurisdictions have a good legal environment for these kinds of projects, and both have a reputation for being reliable and consistent. We chose Switzerland because (1) the government is more accessible, so there is no need to wait six months to talk to regulators, (2) we are working with OpenTransactions, who had an established understanding of the local legal environment and have been able to provide massive help to us, and (3) because it's linguistically and culturally easier for us to deal with Swiss regulators than Chinese regulators.
So it's not at all a free-for-all; it's a solid legal environment with an established reputation for stability that meets our objectives. If we wanted/needed a true free-for-all, we would be working with Panama.
I can see why Switzerland is a smart choice, for reasons such as those you give.
Basically it's an article on an interesting topic. I just wish a better source had been posted.