Technologie

On a residential street in Cessange, a residential district in southwest Luxembourg City, a four-storey apartment building is under renovation. But this isn’t just like any other such building. This is the Clapton Residence (photo), BlocHome’s pilot project for a new approach to home ownership where investors can buy small fragments of the building – the minimum investment is 1,000 euros  –  through the tokenisation allowed by blockchain technology. 

Small and medium enterprises are seen as the backbone of the net zero approach to the climate. But the vast majority of them lack the financing to implement their environmental, social, and governance ( ESG) programmes. A New York City based start-up named Marco Polo Exchange (MPX) is rolling out its POLO marketplace to help at least 150,000 SMEs overcome these challenges. 

Private consumers seeking to invest in virtual assets through investment funds, despite the massive losses incurred by investors in certain cryptocurrencies, should be aware they are doing so without the protection of financial regulatory oversight, Luxembourg financial regulator the CSSF said.

The CSSF document was entitled “Notice to private consumers in the context of investment funds providing exposure to virtual assets”. 

Apex Group on Monday said it has been appointed to provide corporate, administrative and trustee services to the Nasdaq-listed Luxembourg platform of Eqonex Limited, a digital assets financial services company. Eqonex recently launched an Exchange Traded Note  in bitcoin on Frankfurt’s Xetra market.

A recent European Union agreement to crack down on the “wild west” in international crypto markets is “not a threat for the Luxembourg crypto market,” according to a senior official at international fund services firm Apex Group.

Representatives of the European Council and the EU parliament have reached a political agreement on the Markets in Crypto Assets proposal, known as MiCA, which covers issuers of unbacked crypto-assets, and so-called stablecoins, as well as the trading venues and the wallets where crypto-assets are held. 

Luxembourg’s banking association ABBL is encouraging its members to overcome their reluctance and embrace the cloud computing revolution in order to remain “agile and innovative”, especially now that the CSSF has improved its regulatory framework for cloud banking.  A recent ABBL-KPMG survey shows that banks in the Grand Duchy are slow to take up cloud services.

Nasir Zubairi of the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology has some very particular views on some of the newer varieties. About blockchain: “I’m not a technologist, but it seems a little hazy to me as a technology in that it’s a technology looking for a use case. Why is that the most optimal technology for anything?” On cryptocurrencies, he said “I personally would not have touched it being an ex-currency trader myself. I just couldn’t get to grips with the value of any crypto currency.” 

An American early-stage fintech named Pontoro recently pitched in Luxembourg its development of an innovative new digital assets platform that makes infrstructure investments more liquid, and thus less difficult to finance.