Swissquote announced that it is “the first bank worldwide” to enable its clients the opportunity to participate in various ICOs without needing a cryptocurrency wallet.
The holding company specialises in the provision of online financial and trading services, and have been able to capitalise on the rising interest in cryptocurrencies and ICO. The company is also involved in providing robo-advisory, e-forex and e-mortgages.
This should enable Swissquote customers to more easily join a startup or scaleup company’s journey, while also diversifying their assets.
According to Swissquote, up to now, in order to participate in an ICO, investors usually needed to understand blockchain technology and own a blockchain wallet. The new Swissquote wallet issued by the company instead allows clients to purchase tokens against Swiss francs using their trading accounts. Swissquote then takes up the brunt of the work for execution, and custody of tokens.
To get things rolling, Swissquote is working together with LakeDiamond to bring on board the first ICO on its platform. The spin-off of the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) produces artificial diamonds in laboratories with specialised reactors, for use in demanding industrial application such as watch movements, lasers or transistors.
The startup is issuing its ICO to sell machine production minutes in the form of tokens. A virtual token corresponds to actual machine time. The tokens are issued following technical standard used for smart contracts on Ethereum. LakeDiamond is issuing tokens worth 60.5 million Swiss francs in total, and the company plans on using the money raised to ramp up production capabilities, and buying more reactors.
For the collaboration between Swissquote and LakeDiamond, minimum purchase is 60 LakeDiamond tokens (KLD), equivalent to 33 francs.
Featured image via swissquote
