Zurich · Named cluster
Crypto Valley: the Zurich–Zug corridor.
Crypto Valley is the world's original digital asset cluster: the corridor from Zurich's banks to the canton of Zug, where Swiss foundation law and early regulatory clarity made a small alpine town the domicile of choice for token foundations — the Ethereum Foundation settled here in 2014, and hundreds followed.
The cluster's substance is legal and financial rather than technical: foundation structures that hold protocol treasuries, FINMA's early guidance on token classifications, and a banking layer — including dedicated regulated digital asset banks — that services what most jurisdictions still cannot.
What the corridor holds
Foundation domiciles
Protocol foundations and token treasuries structured under Swiss foundation law — the governance wrapper for much of the industry's base-layer capital.
Regulated banking
Digital asset banks and custody providers operating under Swiss banking supervision — the institutional on-ramp the cluster is built around.
The advisory layer
The legal, audit, and structuring bench that a decade of foundation formation trained — expertise that exists at this density nowhere else.
The firm's angle
For GDA the corridor is a structuring question before a coverage one: when a mandate needs a foundation, a Swiss treasury vehicle, or a regulated custody relationship, Crypto Valley is where the answer is domiciled. The firm's Zurich coverage carries the relationships; its digital asset practice carries the work.