"Crypto Innovators Find Fertile Ground in Soft-Touch Switzerland"

From MoneyBeat:

–As U.S. and European Union banking regulators seek greater control over bitoin, they might want to watch what’s happening in Switzerland. 

The neutral European nation is becoming a “mecca” for financial cryptography, says Chris Odom, the Chief Technology Officer at Monetas and the founder of the decentralized Open Transactions platform for encrypted financial tools. (Cryptography is the computer science upon which bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are founded.) And partly that’s because they’re finding a more welcoming environment legally.

In his latest video update on Monetas’ expansion, Mr. Odom announced that he had finally moved his family from Austin, Texas, to Zug, Switzerland to be with the rest of the company’s team and help build the German-speaking region’s “Crypto Valley”

Who are his new neighbors? Well, “right up the road,” is Ethereum, which like Monetas is developing a decentralized platform for financial, economic and social services, in its case one that outside developers can use to create new software applications that bypass middlemen such as banks and lawyers. Ethereum is currently in the second week of a seven-week  ”pre-sale” of ether, the digital currency-like financial tokens needed to run its network, and has so far attracted more than $7 million worth of bitcoin commitments through that offering.

Also near Monetas is Bitcoin Suisse, a bitcoin ATM provider. And among various non-financial cryptography projects, Odom cites ProtonMail, which provides decentralized, securely encrypted email, Threema, a secure version of What’sApp, and Silent Circle, whose BlackPhone project aims to provide secure, encrypted mobile telephony. All are effectively working to protect people’s privacy by blocking third parties such as telephone carriers and Internet Service Providers from snooping on communications.

Why the growth in Switzerland? Odom attributes it to the country’s “legendary neutrality,” as well as its respect for privacy and security — two big buzzwords for cryptographers — and the fact that it is already a tech hub for established names such as International Business Machines Corp. and eBay Inc. He points out that outside of its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, Google Inc.'s biggest engineering office is in Zurich....MORE