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Bitcoin Suisse has spent heavily on advertising, as on this city tram, but has failed to convince the regulator of its credentials to become a bank. / Karin Hofer Cryptocurrency firm Bitcoin Suisse has withdrawn its application for a banking license, in part because it failed to meet the anti-money laundering requirements of the Swiss financial regulator. “The application process has shown the need for further reviews of the anti-money laundering framework and...

UN economist Ian Richards argues that Swiss voters’ fears of a proposal for an e-ID may be swept away as more countries see the benefits of digitising documents, including vaccine passports. A week ago the Swiss public voted overwhelmingly to reject a digital identity scheme that would have given each Swiss citizen and resident an official login and password to open bank accounts, vote, or buy train tickets and ski passes online. The login would be certified,...

The “geoforensic passport” was developed jointly with the University of Lausanne and co-financed by the Swiss government’s innovation agency. Keystone/Sandro Campardo Metalor, one of the world’s biggest gold refiners, has developed a way to quickly confirm where gold had been mined, potentially stopping illegal gold from entering supply chains. The Swiss-based company announced that it has devised the method with the University of Lausanne in a 26-month-long research...

Bitpanda, an Austrian digital investment platform dealing with cryptocurrency, announced that it has closed it Series B funding round with an investment of $170 million and attained unicorn status with a valuation of $1.2 billion. The funding round was led by Valar Ventures with participation from partners of DST Global. Bitpanda had also previously secured $52 million during its Series A from Valar Ventures. The Series B was signed last week and is currently in the...

Der Ökonom Hans-Hermann Hoppe, einer der führenden libertären Köpfe der Gegenwart, widmet sich – wie schon sein Mentor Murray Rothbard und dessen Lehrer Ludwig von Mises -, immer wieder politischen und soziologischen Fragestellungen.  Das vorliegende Buch „Über den demokratischen Untergang und die Wege aus der Ausweglosigkeit“ enthält 15 derartige Textbeiträge, die von 2011 bis 2019 entstanden sind. Es geht um den demokratischen Staat, dessen seit seiner Entstehung...

While the global inflation picture remains fixed at firmly normal (as in, disinflationary), US retail sales by contrast have been highly abnormal. You’d think given that, the consumer price part of the economic equation would, well, equate eventually price-wise. Consumers are spending, prices should be heading upward at a noticeable rate. To begin with, consumer spending – as pictured by the Census Bureau – was obviously boosted during January by the previous...

Niall Ferguson holds a PhD in philosophy from Oxford, taught history at Harvard and NYU, and wrote perhaps the definitive biography of Henry Kissinger. So, naturally, Bloomberg hired him to write on economics. His most recent column for Bloomberg is a strained mix of the Scot’s views on inflation, tempered slightly by a welcome skepticism toward Jerome Powell’s dismissal of the threat. Ferguson is still gun-shy from an exchange with Paul Krugman back in 2010 over...

Despite the record unemployment rate, widespread hardship to businesses, strains on the healthcare system, political turmoil, and general disruption to daily life in 2020, US consumers have managed to ramp up their habit of buying things. Demand for physical goods replaced some of the previous demand for in-person service-related experiences and much of that demand was met with a surge of imports from China as domestic production slowed down due to lockdown measures....

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.33% to 1.1024 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, March 16(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Yesterday’s new record highs in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial helped set the tone for today’s advance in the Asia Pacific region and Europe. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index snapped a two-day decline, with other major markets rising today. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 had edged to new...

Zurich, 16 March 2021 – Art Basel and UBS announced today the publication of the fifth Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, authored by renowned cultural economist Dr Clare McAndrew. The report integrates insight from a recent survey of 2,569 high-net-worth (HNW) collectors, conducted by Arts Economics and UBS Investor Watch, across ten markets: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, and for the first...