PwC's Pierre-Edouard Wahl: Blockchain Can Bring Positive Competition to Swiss Banking Space

MJ: Do you think that SIX opening a digital asset exchange in Switzerland will help the country embrace more blockchain companies?

Some obviously will find the right incentives, but I think banks have to start - rather than thinking in terms of efficiency gains - thinking in terms of new business models with this technology.

What do you think are the benefits that ICOs bring to the blockchain space?

There is clarity between asset-backed tokens and the other type of tokens, and I think there is going to be more and more ICOs that use the asset-backed classification.

Vitalik [Buterin] proposed the DAICO - I think that goes in the right direction - it's definitely not perfect, but I think it's in the right direction, for sure.

I think there's a lot more to do in the ICO space for it to be right.

Do you think that blockchain voting will become more widespread in the future?

The real novelty, I think, is more the smart contracts, the immutability - tokens have existed forever: The gold-backed dollar was not gold, it was backed by gold.

MJ: A lot of people think that cryptocurrency mining has a negative environmental impact because of how much energy it uses.

Does PwC Switzerland need to think about the energy aspect of promoting blockchain?