In February 2026, the Swiss Bankers Association argued that banks should be able to issue a Swiss stablecoin directly. On 29 October 2026, attackers stole about $6.3 billion from Binance’s hot wallets. Most of it moved in roughly twenty minutes.
Binance wasn’t issuing a stablecoin when it was hacked. It was holding assets. That distinction is precisely why I think Berne should go further than it proposes.
What the Swiss stablecoin draft says
In October 2025, the Federal Council proposed two new FINMA licences: one for payment instrument institutions and one for crypto institutions. Draft Article 12a reserves the right to issue the Swiss payment stablecoin it defines to payment instrument institutions, subject to possible exceptions. The token must be issued in Switzerland, tied to one official currency, backed by reserve assets and redeemable at par.
A bank that wants to issue that token would need a separately licensed company. Berne’s reasoning: deposits are claims against the bank, while the reserves behind the token are meant to be kept separate for customers if the issuer fails. In a crisis, depositors might even rush to swap their deposits for the better-protected token inside the same bank. The consultation closed on 6 February 2026. None of this is in force yet.
Why the banks are unhappy
The Swiss Bankers Association supports the bill’s aims but objects to the subsidiary requirement. Why should an already supervised bank need a second company and a second licence to do what a newcomer can do with one? Under Article 48 of MiCA, EU credit institutions can issue e-money tokens themselves, subject to conditions including notifying the regulator and publishing a white paper. It is a fair point.
Berne built a wall for issuance and left the door open for custody
Under draft Article 6, a banking licence would also cover the activities of a crypto institution. Within the limits of Article 51r, a bank could keep crypto assets for clients, trade in its own name for them and make a market in qualifying assets. A Swiss bank could therefore hold for its customers the very stablecoin it could not issue under its banking licence alone.
What Binance just showed us
Binance is not a small exchange run from a garage. It is the world’s largest crypto exchange, with an emergency fund and published proofs of reserves. Its first theory involved a DevOps engineer’s laptop. On 30 October, Binance said it had also found other points of breach. It reported no evidence that private keys had leaked.
TRM Labs found signs of preparation at least 36 hours before the theft. It traced transfers across ten blockchains and concluded that the hot-wallet signing infrastructure appeared to have been compromised. Most of the money moved in minutes.
By 1 November, Binance said it had covered about 95 per cent of the affected amount. It had bought replacement assets with company money; it had not recovered 95 per cent from the thieves. Its 2 November proof of reserves covered ten assets, not its whole balance sheet. Now put the same hot wallet inside a bank.
Where the real risk lies
Let me be precise, because critics will be. In a Swiss bank bankruptcy, crypto held ready for customers can be segregated from the estate if it is allocated individually or pooled with identifiable client shares. FINMA sets out the conditions. But you can only segregate what is still there. You cannot hand a customer a bitcoin that has already left the wallet.
A hack does not directly empty anyone’s savings account. Whether the bank must reimburse custody clients depends on its obligations and on what went wrong. If it must pay, or chooses to pay to keep their trust, the loss can erode its capital. And depositors do not wait for capital to run out. At Credit Suisse, CHF 13.2 billion in deposits left on 15 March 2023 alone.
Swiss deposit insurance covers eligible deposits up to CHF 100,000 per customer per bank. The failed bank’s available liquidity is used first. The banking industry’s total contribution commitment is 1.6 per cent of protected deposits, with a floor of CHF 6 billion: CHF 8.1 billion for July 2026 to June 2027. That gives a sense of scale. The scheme would not replace the stolen crypto. The risk for depositors is what the loss might do to their bank.
My view: crypto and deposits should not share a roof
Banks have no business doing crypto inside the deposit-taking bank. Not because crypto is evil: I have written two books on it, and neither tells you to buy nor to stay away. Because someone who puts their salary in a Swiss bank should not have to take a view on how well its crypto desk protects its signing keys.
A bank can keep coins offline, require independent approval for large transfers and limit its hot-wallet balances. Those are sensible precautions. They still leave one question: which balance sheet takes the hit if they fail?
So my rule is simple.
If a bank wants to issue stablecoins, hold crypto for clients, trade for them or make a market, it should put that business in a separately capitalised subsidiary, give it separate signing controls, and put limits on the parent’s guarantees and exposure.
A subsidiary on paper is not enough.
If the crypto company shares the bank’s computer systems, staff and signing keys, a hacker who gets into one gets into the other.
If the bank guarantees its losses, the bank pays. And if it carries the bank’s name, the bank will rescue it anyway to protect its reputation. On the day of the hack, the separation turns out to exist only in the commercial register.
The point is to decide how much the bank can lose before the hack, not twenty minutes after it. A subsidiary on paper is not a firewall.
What it means for a Swiss VASP or a crypto founder
For entrepreneurs, the draft is good news in one respect: issuing the Swiss stablecoin it defines would not be a bank monopoly.
Both proposed licences would be open to non-banks. Meanwhile, today’s rules apply.
Some activities require anti-money laundering supervision through a self-regulatory organisation (SRO); others may require a FinTech licence, a banking licence or another authorisation. SRO membership is not a blanket crypto licence.
If you are building a Swiss crypto business, start with two questions. Who can move the customer’s assets? Which company owes the customer if they disappear? If those answers are unclear, it is too soon to choose a licence.
FintechLex helps founders and investors choose the right Swiss route: SRO-affiliated companies, licence applications and the acquisition of regulated entities. If you are thinking about a Swiss stablecoin or crypto project, write to me at insight@fintechlex.com.
Rene-Philippe
Sources
Federal Council, consultation draft amending the Financial Institutions Act (art. 6, 12a, 51r), 22 October 2025; Swiss Bankers Association, consultation response, 6 February 2026; Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), art. 48; Binance statements of 30 October and 1–2 November 2026; TRM Labs, analysis of the Binance hack, October 2026; FINMA, Depositor protection at banks and securities firms; esisuisse, system limit 2026–2027; FINMA, report on the Credit Suisse crisis, December 2023.
