Switzerland has spent the better part of a decade building one of the most coherent legal and market frameworks for tokenized securities anywhere in the world. What began as a targeted piece of legislation has grown into a functioning ecosystem of licensed exchanges, custodians, and issuers, now extending well beyond financial instruments into real-world assets such as real estate, private equity, credit, and commodities.

The DLT Blanket Act: The Legal Foundation

The starting point is the DLT Blanket Act, which entered into force in 2021. Rather than creating an entirely new regulatory regime, Swiss lawmakers took the more elegant approach of amending existing legislation — company law, financial market infrastructure law, and debt enforcement law — to accommodate a new category: the ledger-based security. This gave distributed ledger records the same legal standing as traditional book-entry securities, provided the ledger meets specific integrity, access, and transferability requirements.

This matters because it removed the legal ambiguity that had previously made institutional investors and custodian banks cautious about holding tokenized instruments. A ledger-based security under Swiss law carries clear ownership rights, is protected in the event of an intermediary's insolvency, and can be transferred with the same finality as a traditional security — just executed on a distributed ledger instead of a central securities depository.

Market Infrastructure: SDX and BX Digital

Legislation alone does not create a market; infrastructure does. SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) was established as a fully regulated exchange and central securities depository for digital assets, operating under FINMA supervision alongside its traditional counterpart, SIX Swiss Exchange. SDX has focused on institutional issuance, including tokenized bonds from issuers seeking both innovation and full regulatory legitimacy.

More recently, BX Digital received its FINMA license in 2025, becoming a second dedicated venue for digital asset trading and settlement in Switzerland. The emergence of a second licensed exchange signals that tokenized securities have moved from experimental pilots to a competitive, multi-venue market — a sign of maturity that is rare globally.

Institutional Validation

The credibility of this infrastructure has attracted global institutional interest. Citi's partnership with SDX, exploring tokenized deposit and settlement use cases, is one example of how traditional global banks are treating the Swiss framework as a serious venue rather than a sandbox. The Swiss National Bank's Project Helvetia, which tested wholesale central bank digital currency settlement directly on SDX's infrastructure, further underscores that Switzerland's approach has central bank-level backing, not just private sector enthusiasm.

Beyond Financial Instruments: Real-World Assets

The most significant shift over the past two years has been the expansion of tokenization beyond conventional bonds and equities into real-world assets. Real estate funds, private equity fund interests, private credit instruments, and even commodities are increasingly being structured as ledger-based securities. The appeal is straightforward: these are traditionally illiquid, high-minimum, operationally cumbersome asset classes, and tokenization offers a path to fractional ownership, faster settlement, and broader distribution — without sacrificing the legal protections investors expect.

  • Real estate: fractionalized ownership of property portfolios with DLT-based transfer.
  • Private equity: tokenized fund interests with streamlined subscription and secondary transfer.
  • Private credit: ledger-based notes representing direct lending exposure.
  • Commodities: tokenized claims on physically-backed positions.

Practical Implications for Issuers and Investors

For issuers, the practical takeaway is that Switzerland offers a jurisdiction where tokenization is not a legal grey area requiring bespoke opinions for every transaction — it is a defined, well-understood legal category with established market infrastructure to issue, list, and settle against. For investors, it means access to ledger-based securities that carry the same insolvency protections and legal certainty as traditional securities, while benefiting from the efficiency of DLT settlement.

As the asset classes eligible for tokenization continue to expand, the practical question for asset managers and institutions is shifting from "is this legally possible in Switzerland" to "which asset classes and distribution strategies make tokenization worthwhile for our investor base." That is a much healthier question, and one that a mature, well-regulated market like Switzerland's is well suited to answer.