FuW Forum: Bitcoin for Conser­va­tives, Stable­coins for Banks

Crypto­cur­ren­cies are taking center stage in asset manage­ment. But challenges lie ahead as they make their way into tradi­tional finan­cial portfo­lios. This was evident from the presen­ta­tions and discus­sions at the FuW Forum on Block­chain in Finan­cial Services.

The event kicked off with a pointed warning. Fabian Schär, a professor at the Univer­sity of Basel, analyzed the incen­tive struc­ture of the largest crypto­cur­rency. If Bitcoin’s miner rewards are elimi­nated in the future and only transac­tion fees remain, there is a risk of massive insta­bi­lity caused by so-called “block races.”

In such races, miners compete to attack and overwrite blocks of transac­tions already created by others in order to secure lucra­tive transac­tion fees. Schär’s clear conclu­sion: “Bitcoin has a massive problem in the long run.”

Despite such warnings, digital assets have a place in asset manage­ment. The panel that followed agreed on this point. Josef Bollag, a partner at the asset manage­ment firm Tareno, even recom­mends that conser­va­tive investors include 1 to 5% in crypto in their portfo­lios. “We viewed this as an asymme­tric bet,” he explained regar­ding his firm’s early entry into the market—that is, an invest­ment with high profit poten­tial and low risk of loss.

Konstan­tinos Ntefel­oudis, Chief Invest­ment Officer at Maerki Baumann & Co., also considers this asset class to be essen­tial. He recom­mends alloca­ting 2 to 3% of the portfolio to it, combined with strict rebalan­cing. Regar­ding the techno­logy, he says: “In my view, anyone who doesn’t get on board has only themselves to blame.”

Even large finan­cial insti­tu­tions have long since disco­vered the market. Peter Hubli of Zürcher Kanto­nal­bank empha­sized his institution’s interest in block­chain: “We have strong support when it comes to the techno­logy.”

However, there are still some hurdles when it comes to imple­men­ta­tion. Olivier Favre of the law firm Schel­len­berg Wittmer Ltd. urged caution, parti­cu­larly when it comes to crypto­cur­ren­cies beyond Bitcoin and Ether. “There is little regula­tory clarity on how to handle these assets,” the attorney said, summa­ri­zing the situa­tion regar­ding more exotic crypto­cur­ren­cies.

Stable­coins pegged to the dollar or the Swiss franc brought the discus­sion to a close. Jan Weiss­brodt of the Swiss Bankers Associa­tion does not see them as a threat to banks’ business, but rather as a new payment infras­truc­ture. However, he called for forward-looking regula­tions: “Stable­coins do not disrupt finan­cial inter­me­dia­tion, but rather its regula­tion.” Switz­er­land must there­fore now help shape the regula­tory frame­work while maintai­ning high standards.

Source: Finanz und Wirtschaft (FuW), Alexander Trentin, “Bitcoin for Conser­va­tives, Stable­coins for Banks,” with Josef U. Bollag, partner and member of the board of direc­tors of Tareno AG, May 6, 2026.