How to Trade Ethereum (ETH) in Switzerland

Getting Ethereum exposure from Switzerland takes a wallet and USDC; the legal status and rail-by-rail detail follow.

Is Ethereum trading legal in Switzerland?

Spot crypto is legal in Switzerland and the service side around it is licensed: FINMA publishes a standing list of the crypto services it supervises - custody, DLT payment systems, staking, stablecoins, crypto funds and ETPs, DLT securities trading - and treats each as a supervisory-law question. Accepting client crypto is a licensable activity: FINMA authorisation is required once the number of clients whose deposits or crypto-based assets you accept passes twenty, and operating a venue for DLT securities trading needs a DLT trading facility licence.

Holding, buying and selling crypto as a private individual is unrestricted, and the Federal Tax Administration confirms the point from the other side by taxing crypto holdings as ordinary movable assets. What leveraged crypto derivatives a Swiss retail client may be offered is a separate question.

What the contract is

The contract itself does not change by geography: a ETH perpetual settles in USDC everywhere.

Sign up on Canborsa with email, X or a wallet

No document upload to open the account. Canborsa is non-custodial: your collateral stays under your own keys until a position opens.

Email X Wallet

Fund the account with USDC

Deposit USDC over Canton, Robinhood Chain, Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain or Arbitrum. Canborsa takes no fiat, so buying the USDC happens wherever you normally buy stablecoins.

→Robinhood Chain

Open ETH-PERP

Pick ETH in the markets list. The ticket shows the live price, the current funding rate and max leverage 25x .

ETH-PERPPerpetual · USDC marginLONG

Choose Buy / Long, then set size and leverage

Buying $1,000 of ETH at 5x uses $200 of collateral. Higher leverage moves the liquidation price closer to your entry: your exposure is the position size, whatever margin you posted. Set a stop-loss below your entry before you walk away.

No capital gains tax for a private investor: the FTA treats buying and selling payment tokens like transactions in conventional currencies, so gains in private assets are in principle tax-free and losses non-deductible. Two things are taxed instead.

Trading Ethereum from Switzerland: legal.

Remote identity verification is the norm and is expressly regulated: FINMA lists digital client onboarding among the crypto-adjacent services it supervises and points to Circular 2016/7 on video and online identification, updated in 2021, as the governing text.

Switzerland traders can fund Ethereum positions using Bank transfer (SIC/SEPA), TWINT and Credit/debit card.

Canborsa offers up to 25x leverage on Ethereum for traders based in Switzerland.