Switzerland’s DLT Act is the Federal Act of 25 September 2020 adapting Swiss federal law to distributed ledger technology. The framework is fully in force as of 1 August 2021, after selected provisions on ledger-based securities took effect on 1 February 2021. It is best understood as a targeted amendment package rather than a standalone crypto code for every digital-asset activity.
The Act updates several federal statutes to address tokenised securities, DLT trading facilities, custody, settlement, insolvency treatment, and related private-law questions. It forms part of Switzerland’s broader approach of adapting existing financial-market and civil-law rules to blockchain-based infrastructure while leaving other regimes, including anti-money-laundering and financial-services rules, to apply where relevant.
Key provisions of the Switzerland DLT Act
Ledger-based securities
The Act introduced rules for ledger-based securities in the Swiss Code of Obligations. A ledger-based security is a right registered in a qualifying securities ledger and exercisable or transferable only through that ledger. The statutory model focuses on control, integrity, disclosure of ledger functionality, and the ability of creditors to view relevant entries without relying on a third party.
This provision is central to Switzerland’s tokenisation framework because it gives market participants a civil-law route for issuing rights directly on a distributed or otherwise electronic register. The Act also includes rules on transfer, effects, collateral, cancellation, information duties, and issuer liability for inaccurate or misleading information about the security or ledger.
DLT trading facilities
The Act amended the Financial Market Infrastructure Act to add a licensing category for DLT trading facilities. These facilities support multilateral trading of DLT securities and may, depending on their design, admit certain non-professional participants, hold DLT securities in central custody, or clear and settle transactions under uniform rules. FINMA is the licensing and supervisory authority for this market-infrastructure category.
DLT trading facilities are subject to selected trading-venue requirements, including self-regulation, orderly trading, transparency, trading supervision, and suspension rules. The Act therefore links blockchain-based market infrastructure to the existing Swiss financial-market framework rather than creating an unregulated trading venue category.
Custody and insolvency treatment
The Act also addresses bankruptcy and custody questions. It provides for the surrender of certain crypto-based assets claimed by third parties when statutory allocation and readiness conditions are met, and it adds access-to-data rules where data is subject to a bankrupt estate’s power of disposal. These provisions are relevant to custody, safekeeping, and infrastructure arrangements, but they do not remove the need to assess other applicable Swiss law.
Status and timeline
Parliament adopted the DLT Act on 25 September 2020. The referendum deadline expired on 14 January 2021. Selected civil-law and financial-law amendments became effective on 1 February 2021, including provisions enabling ledger-based securities. The Federal Council then brought the remaining provisions and the associated blanket ordinance into force on 1 August 2021.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 25 Sep 2020 | Parliament adopted the Federal Act. |
| 1 Feb 2021 | Ledger-based securities provisions took effect. |
| 1 Aug 2021 | DLT Act fully entered into force with the blanket ordinance. |
Jurisdictional impact
For CryptoSlate’s legal-reference taxonomy, this profile should be treated as a Swiss federal framework for tokenised securities and regulated DLT market infrastructure. Affected actors include token issuers using ledger-based securities, DLT trading facilities, securities firms, custodians, financial market infrastructures, and market participants that interact with DLT securities.
The Act does not create a single licensing regime for every crypto activity. Its most specific licensing change concerns DLT trading facilities under FinMIA, while other crypto-related activities may continue to be assessed under Swiss financial-market, anti-money-laundering, civil, insolvency, and securities-law rules. This profile is a neutral legal-reference summary and is not legal, tax, investment, trading, or compliance advice.