Bitcoin Association Switzerland board member Luzius Meisser says he believes the next wave of crypto innovation will focus on stablecoins and security tokens. Meisser made his remarks during an interview with Cointelegraph’s correspondent during the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland on Jan. 16.
Meisser is a computer scientist and economist who co-founded the Bitcoin Association Switzerland in 2013, as well as an active figure in the local crypto industry, serving as a member of the board of directors for crypto-focused asset management and brokerage firm Bitcoin Suisse AG, among other ventures.
In regard to the medium-term future of crypto, Meisser said he expects the initial coin offering (ICOs) sector to undergo a significant change, noting that until now ICO investors have had negligible rights, as they have essentially been little more than donors.
With demands that their protections become more tangible, Meisser predicted that security tokens can be expected to account for the next, much more heavily regulated wave of the ICO market.
“I would say payment and utility tokens are more or less over, sometimes they make sense.”
Meisser’s exception was certain stablecoins, whose decentralized mechanisms ensure they are legally considered to be payment or utility tokens rather than securities. He isolated stablecoins more broadly, whether they are securities or otherwise, as an important future pillar of the blockchain industry, stating:
“Stablecoins are a precondition to enable average companies to bring their equity onto the blockchain, because if they issue bonds or shares they want to do so against U.S. dollars, euros or Swiss francs, because those are the currencies they calculate in, not Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH).”
In other remarks, Meisser noted that Swiss banks remain very risk averse and thus try not to touch crypto, and outlined several mechanisms local enterprises and startups can use to circumvent banking difficulties in the country. Notably, as reported, a Swiss startup last fall sealed funding to set up a bank offering cryptocurrency-related services.
As reported, Meisser’s views are shared by Bitcoin (BTC) bulls and Gemini crypto exchange founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who have recently said they believe stablecoins and tokenized securities are an important development for the digital currency space.
The twins launched their own New York regulator-approved, dollar-backed, ECR-20 compatible stablecoin, the Gemini dollar (GUSD), last September — one of a host of proliferating new stablecoins notionally collateralized 1:1 by a major fiat currency.
