Publishing Verified Trader Performance — Switzerland Regulatory Overview

How NakedPnL is positioned in Switzerland under FINMA, the FinSA, the FinIA, the CISA, the AMLA-VASP regime, and the revFADP 2023 data-protection framework.

NakedPnL operates a public registry of verified investment performance produced by individual traders who voluntarily connect read-only exchange API keys or sign on-chain wallet attestations. Daily NAV snapshots feed a time-weighted return (TWR) calculation; results are recorded in an append-only, SHA-256 chained ledger and Merkle-anchored to Bitcoin via OpenTimestamps so any third party can independently re-verify them.

This page describes how that activity is positioned under Swiss law, with reference to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), the FinSA, the FinIA, the Collective Investment Schemes Act (CISA, SR 951.31), the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA, SR 955.0), and the revised Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP, SR 235.1).

How NakedPnL is classified in Switzerland

NakedPnL's activity is the production and distribution of factual performance data. The platform does not hold a FINMA licence under FinIA Article 5 (portfolio managers, trustees, managers of collective assets, fund management companies, securities firms), is not registered under FinSA Article 28 as a client adviser, and is not a financial intermediary affiliated to a self-regulatory organisation under the AMLA.

FinSA Article 3(c): financial services and investment advice

FinSA Article 3(c) defines financial services as a closed list of activities including the acquisition or disposal of financial instruments, the receipt and transmission of orders, the management of financial instruments (portfolio management), the granting of personal recommendations on transactions in financial instruments (investment advice), and the granting of credit to finance transactions in financial instruments. The personal-recommendation criterion in Article 3(c)(4) tracks MiFID II Article 4(1)(4) closely.

NakedPnL does not produce client-specific outputs. The registry shows the same content to every reader of a given page; the platform does not collect data on a client's circumstances or knowledge and experience and does not perform a suitability or appropriateness assessment under FinSA Articles 11 to 14. On those facts, the platform's analysis is that the published content is general information rather than a personal recommendation under Article 3(c)(4) FinSA.

FINMA Circular 2009/1 on guidelines for asset management remains a useful reference for the boundary between marketing material and personalised advice; Swiss case law and the explanatory dispatch (Botschaft) accompanying the FinSA also bear on this analysis. Both confirm that impersonal factual data published to the public is generally outside the financial-service perimeter.

FinIA, CISA, and the licensing perimeter

The FinIA, in force since 1 January 2020, sets out the authorisation regime for portfolio managers (Article 17), trustees (Article 17), managers of collective assets (Article 24), fund management companies (Article 32), and securities firms (Article 41). NakedPnL does not carry on any of those activities. The platform does not manage assets for clients on a discretionary or non-discretionary mandate, does not act as trustee, does not manage collective investment schemes, and does not issue or trade financial instruments on its own account.

The CISA regulates collective investment schemes — open-ended (SICAV, contractual investment funds) and closed-ended (SICAF, limited partnerships for collective investment) — and the entities that manage and distribute them. NakedPnL does not operate a collective investment scheme within the meaning of CISA Article 7. There is no pooling of capital from multiple investors; each trader's reported performance is the result of trading on the trader's own account, with no commingled vehicle and no professional manager acting for the public.

AMLA, VASPs, and crypto-assets

Switzerland regulates virtual-asset service providers (VASPs) primarily through the AMLA. Activities that qualify as financial intermediation under Article 2(3) AMLA — including custody and exchange of crypto-assets in certain circumstances — require affiliation with a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation (SRO) or direct FINMA supervision. FINMA's guidance on stablecoins (2019) and on initial coin offerings (2018, updated 2024) sets out the case-by-case analysis.

NakedPnL does not custody crypto-assets, does not exchange fiat for crypto, and does not offer a payment service. Read-only API keys and on-chain wallet attestations confer no spending or transfer authority. On those facts, the platform's analysis is that it does not perform a financial intermediation activity under Article 2(3) AMLA and does not require SRO affiliation or direct FINMA supervision.

What NakedPnL does not do

• No copy trading. The platform cannot replicate a trader's positions into another user's account.
• No personal recommendations under FinSA Article 3(c)(4).
• No portfolio management under FinIA Article 17.
• No reception or transmission of orders under FinSA Article 3(c)(2).
• No custody of crypto-assets, fiat, or financial instruments.
• No execution. The platform never sends orders to any venue.
• No collective investment scheme under CISA Article 7.

These design choices are encoded as feature flags in the codebase and protected by a continuous-integration test that fails the build if any flag is changed.

What Swiss users should know

Swiss users should treat the registry as factual performance data. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results — a phrase FINMA and FinSA implementing rules require regulated firms to display alongside past-performance information. NakedPnL applies an equivalent statement on every trader profile. Article 68 FinSA and the Financial Services Ordinance (FinSO, SR 950.11) Articles 81 to 85 govern advertising and marketing of financial instruments by regulated firms; the platform's editorial publication of factual data sits outside that regime.

If a third party offers to manage your money based on a NakedPnL track record, that party is responsible for its own FINMA authorisation or SRO affiliation. Check FINMA's authorised institutions register and the FINMA-recognised client-adviser registers (BX Swiss, Regservices, ProperRegister) before transacting with any firm that holds itself out as authorised. NakedPnL does not vouch for any third-party manager.

Datenschutz: revFADP 2023 and supervisory authority

The revised Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP, SR 235.1) entered into force on 1 September 2023, alongside the revised Data Protection Ordinance (DPO, SR 235.11). It modernises Switzerland's data-protection law along lines broadly comparable to the EU GDPR — recognising rights of access, correction, deletion, and data portability, requiring a data-protection impact assessment for high-risk processing, and providing for direct administrative fines under Article 60 ff. revFADP.

Lawful processing under the revFADP requires a justification — performance of a contract, an overriding private interest, or consent for sensitive personal data and for the public listing of identifying information. NakedPnL relies on contract performance for users with an account, on overriding private interest for minimal aggregated analytics, and on explicit consent for the public listing of a trader's handle and TWR series in the registry. Withdrawing public-listing consent removes the registry entry from public endpoints.

Complaints may be raised with the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, EDÖB / PFPDT). Swiss data-protection law does not currently provide for direct individual complaints to FDPIC equivalent to GDPR Article 77, but the FDPIC may open formal investigations and impose binding measures.

Tax considerations

NakedPnL is not a Swiss financial intermediary and does not produce tax documents for users. Trading gains by Swiss-resident private investors are generally exempt from federal income tax as private capital gains, subject to the qualified-securities-trader (gewerbsmässiger Wertschriftenhändler) test in the Federal Tax Administration (FTA) Circular No. 36. Crypto-asset taxation is summarised in the FTA's working paper on cryptocurrencies. A licensed Swiss tax adviser is the right resource for specific questions.

Disclaimer variant for Switzerland

Switzerland is not currently mapped in lib/jurisdictions.ts; users with a Swiss IP fall through to the default disclaimer variant, which presents the standard publisher disclaimer without an EU- or UK-specific notice. The default variant is intentionally conservative and emphasises that NakedPnL is a publisher of verified factual data, not a financial-services provider. A Switzerland-specific variant may be added once the platform completes a more detailed Swiss legal review.

Frequently asked questions