Since being founded in August 2013, Bitcoin Suisse has built a comprehensive brokerage and storage offer, facilitated and provided services for some of the world’s largest ICOs and attracted senior financial services executives to the crypto-finance industry.

Recently, the company announced the launch of the Swiss Crypto Vault, which offers hyper-secure storage of crypto-assets. Today, Bitcoin Suisse celebrates its five-year anniversary.

Founded in August 2013, Bitcoin Suisse was the first company in Switzerland to professionally offer crypto-assets and crypto-financial services at scale. At the time, there existed but a few cryptoassets, with Bitcoin being by far the dominant player in the market.

Today, there are over 1600 and more and more traditional securities and assets are expected to be issued in a decentralized manner moving forwards. Within its first year, the company joined a Swiss self-regulatory organisation, supervised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).

During that time, Bitcoin Suisse also started deploying Bitcoin ATMs in Switzerland to facilitate mainstream access to and adaption of crypto-currencies. In August 2014, the Ethereum crowd offering and the associated FINMA approval of the crowd-sale established the precedence and legality of selling crypto-tokens against currency (ICO). Bitcoin Suisse helped facilitate investment into the Ethereum crowd-sale, thus starting its multi-year relationship with both the ICO-topic and the Ethereum Foundation.

Bitcoin in Zug

In April 2016, Bitcoin Suisse opened up the first large scale crypto-mining facility in Switzerland. Soon afterwards the company took charge of software development in-house by founding BTCS Technologies ApS in Copenhagen. Proprietary software is a key in terms of product offerings, security and performance in the financial services industry. Today, 18 full-time employees work for BTCS Technologies.

When the Swiss town of Zug started accepting Bitcoin payments in July 2016, Bitcoin Suisse provided the necessary infrastructure. At that time, the town was the first public institution in the world to accept Bitcoin as payment for public services. Other institutions such as the Commercial Register Office of the Canton of Zug and the University of Lucerne soon followed the town’s example and chose Bitcoin Suisse as their service provider.

With the demand for exposure to crypto-assets as well  as for crypto-financial services having grown rapidly in the past 5 years, Bitcoin Suisse has expanded its client base to include family offices, funds, asset managers and banks. In July 2017 Falcon Private Bank selected Bitcoin Suisse as its service provider for the bank’s crypto-asset management solutions, thus becoming the first bank in the world to offer the buying, selling and storage of cryptoassets directly to its clients.

During 2017, Bitcoin Suisse facilitated a number of the world’s then largest ICOs, including projects such as Tezos, Bancor and Status. Bitcoin Suisse has over the past years helped dozens of ICOing entities with their offering and tens of thousands of contributors to find and contribute to some of the most successful Initial Coin Offerings and Token Generation Events on record.

After a career spanning more than 20 years at Credit Suisse, Dr. Arthur Vayloyan joined the company in November 2017 as CEO. Together with Urs Bigger and Luzius Meisser, Vayloyan was appointed to the Board of Directors.

Further seasoned financial services experts joined the management team including Stefan Lütolf as Head of Trading & Brokerage, Rolf Gätzi as Head of Finance and Operations and David Riegelnig as Head of Risk Management. In this way Bitcoin Suisse has built a strong executive team and board, bringing together top-end knowledge, know-how and track record from both the crypto-financial scene with that of traditional finance.

At the end of 2017, Bitcoin Suisse became a main sponsor of the Danish hockey team Rungsted Seier Capital, being the first ever crypto-financial company to sponsor a national major league professional sports team.

65 Emploeyees and Sponsor of Danish Hockey Team

During 2018, Bitcoin Suisse extended its service offering continuously and expanded its team from about 20 people at the end of 2017 to over 65 highly skilled employees as of August 2018. Relentless efforts to further improve the service quality have resulted in high client satisfaction and continued growth of the company’s business lines.

For Bitcoin Suisse, the five-year anniversary provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved and to highlight the successes that have shaped our firm and our industry. Above all, it is an opportunity to thank everyone involved for their commitment, trust, visionary thinking and hard work.

Niklas Nikolajsen, Chairman and Founder of Bitcoin Suisse said:

“In recent weeks alone, the company expanded the management team, moved to new offices, launched new key services and announced the launch of the Swiss Crypto Vault, which offers hyper-secure storage of crypto-assets.

Moving forwards, we have international ambitions, as well as ambitions to move key existing and new business activities into regulated entities in Switzerland and/or abroad. I would like to thank everyone who has joined me on this extraordinary journey during the last five years, and who has helped turn Bitcoin Suisse into the great success story it is today.”