Following the FMA (Financial Market Authority Liechtenstein) warning published yesterday regarding SMART VALOR AG (Liechtenstein), SMART VALOR would like to provide clarification around its current regulatory setup:
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• SMART VALOR AG (Liechtenstein) is operating a currency exchange for cryptocurrencies limited to payment and utility tokens. The current exchange falls into the category of currency exchange (Wechselstube) which does not need to be licensed by FMA but is subject to the Liechtenstein Due Diligence Act.
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• SMART VALOR AG (Switzerland) is permitted to act as Financial Intermediary based on its membership with VQF, financial services standards association, a Swiss self-regulatory organization supervised by FINMA.
SMART VALOR would like to point out that in its current structure it does not provide any services which would require authorisation through FMA. In particular, SMART VALOR does not operate exchange for security tokens. SMART VALOR exchange has never listed any security tokens and is aware of the fact that security tokens can only be traded on the exchange after the necessary regulatory approval is received.
Regarding the launch of cryptocurrency exchange out of Liechtenstein, SMART VALOR reached out to FMA in September 2018. The view that no license is needed to operate cryptocurrency exchange was confirmed by FMA. With this the operation of the cryptocurrency exchange does not fall into the category of business that requires authorisation. The operation of cryptocurrency exchange only requires registration. SMART VALOR has registered the start of the operations with respective authorities of Liechtenstein (Amt für Volkswirtschaft). FMA has also been notified about the launch of operations of a currency exchange according to the Liechtenstein Due Diligence Act in early August 2019.
The notion of "Licensed Exchange" on the SMART VALOR website was place in the section dedicated to description of the strategy, implementation roadmap and future plans. In particular SMART VALOR plans to broaden the range of listed tokens to include also security tokens in the future, after the necessary regulatory authorisation has been received.
To avoid further confusion about the current and future status of the exchange, we changed the section:
the following (old):
into the following (new):
Services related to security tokens will only be offered after the necessary regulatory approvals/authorizations have been obtained.
SMART VALOR will continue to stick to in fields of compliance and security.
In case you have any further questions, please contact SMART VALOR : talk@smartvalor.com.