![don_banner_column-780](https://assets.euromoneydigital.com/dims4/default/b862b13/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x943+0+0/resize/800x393!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Feuromoney-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F53%2F3b%2Fbb86da6a4ea29aedbac1f8d94130%2Fdominic-oneill-on-europe-1920px.jpg)
![Zug-780](https://assets.euromoneydigital.com/dims4/default/bd716b2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/780x426+0+0/resize/800x437!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Feuromoney-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fec%2Fb0%2Fdf74d4e4e9c9bec7de79473ce871%2Fzug-780.jpg)
Zug, Switzerland proves an unlikely setting for the centre of cryptocurrency
Switzerland is Europe’s most cosmopolitan nation, although its geography should make it the most closed. This is a paradox rooted in finance, and the situation is getting weirder. The European hub of cryptocurrency is not London or Paris, but Zug.
I travelled to Zug last month to attend a launch of SEBA Crypto, which hopes to get a Swiss banking licence next year to offer accounts in state-issued money as well as crypto, bridging the two. It is a small town that nestles on a lake, in a bucolic valley of green fields and clonking cow bells, a short and winding train ride from Zurich (itself hardly a pulsating metropolis).
Rather than the self-effacing rustic types one might expect to find in a place like this, a craft ale-swigging crowd from the four corners of the earth greets me. I only managed to get to Seba’s chief executive Guido Buehler after a battle with the firm’s vociferous New York-raised chief marketing officer, Morgan Pierce.