SwissBorg in 2026: The App That Argues Proof of Reserves Is the Wrong Question, and the $41 Million It Lost Without Being Hacked

Before anything else, a framing point that most reviews get wrong.

SwissBorg is not an exchange. There are no perpetuals, no futures, no options, no order book and no leverage. It is a mobile-first crypto wealth-management app that routes your orders to other venues and charges a visible fee for doing it. Comparing its pricing to Bybit's maker and taker table is comparing a retail broker to a derivatives venue.

The right comparison set is Bitpanda, Revolut, Swissquote, Relai and Coinbase's simple interface. Judged against those, SwissBorg is a genuinely interesting product with two uncomfortable facts attached: it is expensive, and in September 2025 it lost 41 million dollars without anyone touching its own systems.

The company

SwissBorg was co-founded by Cyrus Fazel and Anthony Lesoismier-Geniaux, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. The legal entity is SBorg SA, Rue du Grand-Chêne 8, 1003 Lausanne. [1][2][3]

Sources split on the founding year. SwissBorg's own help centre and most coverage say 2017; Tracxn and an EDHEC alumni interview with Fazel say 2016. The ICO ran from 7 December 2017 to 10 January 2018, which anchors the public launch. Write it as founded in 2017, noting the company was incorporated slightly earlier if you want precision. [1][4][5][6]

Fazel is CEO. He studied at EDHEC Business School and previously worked at Julius Baer. Lesoismier-Geniaux is co-founder and Chief Strategy and Product Officer. Named executives also include Nicolas Rémond as CTO and Jeremy Baumann as CFO. [3][5][7][8]

The funding history is unusual, and it is the company's identity rather than a footnote.

• December 2017 to January 2018 ICO: raised CHF 50 million from around 24,000 to 25,000 contributors across 149 countries [6][9]
• Q1 2023 Series A: raised over CHF 21 million from 16,660 individual investors, a crowdfunded round rather than a venture round [9]

Fazel has said publicly that SwissBorg has "no investors but a very large number of users and token holders." That is the pitch, and the Series A shows it is broadly true in structure even if not literally. [5]

Headcount is unusable across sources: Tracxn lists 16, The Org lists 51 to 200, Crunchbase lists 251 to 500, Fazel said "more than 200" in 2021, and Coin Bureau says "thousands." Do not publish a number. The Tracxn figure is almost certainly a data error. [3][4][5][8][10]

Three countries, one app, and why it matters

This is the structural point a Greek reader needs, and almost every review still gets it wrong.

SBorg SA, Lausanne, owns the SwissBorg application. [2]

BlockNodes SAS, 29 rue Blanche, 75009 Paris, holds the MiCA authorisation and is now the contracting entity for European users. RCS 929 022 002, LEI 969500PZJWT3TD1SUI59. [2][11]

SwissBorg Solutions OÜ (Estonia) was the previous operating entity, holding Estonian FIU Virtual Currency Service Licence FVT000326. It has been superseded. Many published reviews still describe SwissBorg as Estonian-licensed. That has been out of date since June 2026. [12][13]

So: a Swiss parent owns the app and the brand, a French subsidiary holds the EU licence and your contract, and a Swiss anti-money-laundering supervisor no longer governs your account if you are in Greece.

The licence, and the one thing it has that nobody else does

Verified directly on the AMF register: BlockNodes SAS holds MiCA CASP licence A2026-011, granted by France's Autorité des marchés financiers on 5 March 2026. [11]

The authorisation covers exactly six services:

1. Custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients
2. Execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of clients
3. Placing of crypto-assets
4. Providing advice on crypto-assets
5. Portfolio management on crypto-assets
6. Transfer services for crypto-assets on behalf of clients [11]

And here is the detail nobody has reported. The licence does not include operating a trading platform, exchange of crypto-assets for funds, exchange for other crypto-assets, or reception and transmission of orders. That is the profile of a broker and portfolio manager, not a venue. It matches the meta-exchange model precisely: SwissBorg executes your order on somebody else's book rather than matching it on its own.

More importantly, SwissBorg is one of very few MiCA CASPs authorised for advice and portfolio management. Bybit EU holds neither. OKX Europe's nine-service licence does. This is the strongest genuine differentiator in SwissBorg's regulatory profile, and no Greek coverage has picked it up.

One thing to state carefully. SwissBorg is a member of VQF, a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation, which covers anti-money-laundering supervision under Swiss AMLA. That is not a FINMA licence and should never be described as one. Swiss regulatory guidance draws the distinction explicitly. [14][15][16]

The migration, and a deadline Greek users may have missed

The AMF granted the licence on 5 March 2026, announced by SwissBorg on 11 March. [11][17]

SwissBorg then migrated all EEA, Swiss and UK accounts from the Estonian entity to BlockNodes SAS. The migration completed on 22 June 2026, eight days before the MiCA transitional deadline. Balances, portfolios and transaction histories carried over, and most users needed to take no action, though some were asked for additional documentation under MiCA's governance standards. [18][19][20]

One practical warning worth repeating for anyone with a standing transfer. Deposits to the old bank details were accepted only briefly. After 30 June 2026, funds sent to the old details are returned automatically. [18]

BlockNodes SAS became the data controller for European users under GDPR. Swiss and UK users were also moved to the French entity, even though MiCA does not apply to them. [18]

Post-migration, SwissBorg introduced enhanced referral rewards and cashback of up to 99% on exchange fees at top loyalty ranks. [19][20]

And a mildly uncomfortable note for your readers. SwissBorg has named Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands as its priority growth markets under the passport. Greece is not on that list. [17]

What a Greek user actually gets

Greece is covered by the passport from France, so Greek residents can use SwissBorg legally. Your contracting entity is BlockNodes SAS in Paris and your supervisor is the AMF, not the Hellenic Capital Market Commission. [11][18]

SwissBorg states availability in 47 countries and 16 fiat currencies, with SEPA and Faster Payments bank rails. Deposits must come from a bank account in the user's own name; third-party deposits are returned. [10][21][22]

KYC runs in three levels: Level 1 (government ID) caps deposits and withdrawals at €5,000; Level 2 (proof of address) raises limits substantially; Level 3 (proof of funds) removes them. [21][23]

One Greece-specific data point, and it is worth including honestly. A published review cites an account from Greece reporting significant verification delays even after submitting all documents and completing video verification. That is one user's report rather than a pattern, but it is the only Greece-specific evidence in this research and omitting it would be selective. [24]

Not verified, and worth checking before you rely on any of it: whether the app has a Greek-language interface; whether EUR and SEPA withdrawal times or fee floors differ for Greek banks; whether SwissBorg produces Greek-usable tax exports; whether any Hellenic Capital Market Commission or Bank of Greece notice exists.

And one gap that genuinely matters: whether USDT remains available to Greek users after the migration could not be confirmed. OKX and Bybit both had to drop USDT under MiCA. SwissBorg's position was not stated in any source found. Check in-app before acting on anything about stablecoins.

Proof of Liabilities, and a genuinely different argument

SwissBorg does not publish a conventional Proof of Reserves. It publishes a Proof of Liabilities, and argues publicly that Proof of Reserves alone is the weaker artefact, because it says nothing about a company's real liabilities or its fiat balances. [12][25]

The mechanism. A Merkle-tree Proof of Liabilities portal where each user enters an Audit Credential ID from the app to verify that their balance is included in, and accurately reflected within, the company's total liabilities. Audits are published monthly. [25][26][27][28]

The reserve side is handled by third-party disclosure rather than a self-published report. Live wallet dashboards run through Fireblocks, Nansen and DefiLlama, with the wallet list published on GitHub at github.com/SwissBorg/pub. There is also a public API and repository for the liabilities proofs. [12][29][30][31]

SwissBorg's own disclaimer is unusually candid and deserves quoting in substance: the liabilities data comes from SwissBorg's internal ledger, the company disclaims liability for misstated balances arising from ledger error, and the proof gives no information about other company liabilities or risks. [27]

User funds are stated to be segregated from company assets, and custody uses multi-party computation "keyless" technology. Hacken scored SwissBorg 10 out of 10 in a smart-contract risk report. [10][25][32]

The honest assessment: SwissBorg's approach is intellectually the most interesting in this series and operationally the least complete. OKX gives you a zk-STARK over both sides with an open-source verifier. Bybit gives you a Merkle tree with a named auditor. SwissBorg gives you a strong liabilities proof and outsources the reserves side to third-party dashboards. The argument for it is good; the artefact is thinner.

Users, assets and what cannot be measured

The user figure has been recycled unchanged for two years. "Over 1 million registered users" appears on CoinGecko, Coinbase's price page and multiple reviews, all apparently tracing to the same 2024 source. Bitbo's 2026 comparison page gives 884,400 verified users. Fazel cited around 150,000 token holders back in 2021. [5][10][21][33][34]

Attribute it as "over one million registered users, a figure SwissBorg has cited since 2024" rather than presenting it as current, and note the registered-versus-verified gap.

Total user crypto assets are reported at approximately $1.994 billion. [21]

Trading volume cannot be compared to an exchange, and the article should say so. SwissBorg does not report it the way an exchange does, and it does not appear in CoinGecko or TokenInsight exchange rankings, because it routes orders elsewhere rather than operating a book. The comparable metric is assets under management, not volume.

Fees, and the number that will surprise your readers

SwissBorg advertises zero spread and charges a visible service fee instead, arguing that competitors hide their costs in the exchange rate. Whether that is better depends entirely on the comparison. [22][35]

Exchange fees by loyalty rank: [21]

Auto-Invest ranges from 1% at Standard to 0.25% at Genesis.

Other costs: bank transfer deposits are free; card deposits cost 2.25% to 4.5% depending on card type and rank; fiat withdrawals carry a 0.10% execution fee with per-currency minimum and maximum; crypto withdrawals cost the network fee plus a 0.10% execution fee; and Crypto Bundles carry a subscription-style monthly management fee based on balance. [21][22][36]

Higher ranks require staking BORG. The cost of the discount is therefore exposure to a volatile token, which is a real cost and should not be buried. [23][33]

Since 30 September 2025 a cashback programme returns up to 90% of exchange fees, later raised to up to 99% at Elite ranks, paid in BORG bought on the open market and auto-staked. SwissBorg estimated 15 million dollars in annual BORG buybacks to support it, described as a twentyfold increase on 2024. [19][37][38]

Here is the comparison that matters. Standard-tier SwissBorg costs 1.49% per exchange. Bybit spot is 0.10%. OKX spot is 0.08% maker and 0.10% taker. Even at Genesis rank, 0.25%, SwissBorg is more expensive than either at base tier. The cashback narrows the gap for BORG stakers, but the honest headline is that SwissBorg charges retail-app prices, not exchange prices.

Products

Smart Exchange, the meta-exchange: a centralised and decentralised exchange aggregator that routes orders across venues for best execution, expanded to include Berachain, Base and the regulated exchange Bullish. [10][33][39]

Earn: yield programmes across multiple assets, powered in part by third-party staking providers. This is the part that failed in September 2025.

Crypto Bundles and Thematics: ETF-like baskets on a subscription fee basis.

Alpha (Early Deals): launchpad and one-time investment opportunities.

Auto-Invest: recurring buys.

BORG token: fee discounts, higher Earn yields, launchpad allocation and governance votes. Supply is capped at 1 billion with no new issuance, reduced over time through buybacks. Governance runs through a "Protect and Choose" pool and a Sustainability Score that sets quarterly buyback size between €30,000 and €450,000, plus an independent €125,000 quarterly allocation for three years. BORG replaced CHSB via a contract migration. [9][33][40]

Airdrop redistribution: SwissBorg is one of the few centralised platforms that passes airdrops through to users. [10]

No derivatives, no leverage, no margin, no options. [10][39]

The Kiln breach, 8 September 2025

Approximately 192,600 to 193,000 SOL, worth about 41 to 41.5 million dollars, was drained from SwissBorg's SOL Earn programme. [41][42][43]

The root cause, from SwissBorg's own post-mortem, is the important part: the attack never touched SwissBorg's infrastructure.

Attackers compromised a GitHub access token belonging to a Kiln infrastructure engineer, then injected a malicious payload into the Kiln Connect API. The payload targeted organisations holding more than 150,000 SOL. During what appeared to be a routine "deactivate" transaction, extra instructions silently transferred control of the staked tokens to the attacker's wallet. SwissBorg was affected because it was the first Kiln client to sign an unstaking transaction on a wallet holding more than 150,000 SOL. [44]

SwissBorg detected the fraudulent transaction within minutes of Kiln's sales team raising the unstaking query, opened a case with Seal 911, and forensics concluded within hours that the tampering had occurred inside Kiln's infrastructure. Kiln subsequently performed an emergency exit of all its ETH validators and rotated private keys across ATOM, INJ and TIA. [44]

And here is the detail that cuts both ways, which SwissBorg published itself. The company states it had expressly asked Kiln to integrate a native transaction-decoding function into their interface, and that this was not implemented. The tool Kiln did recommend was not integrated, not open-source, not verifiable and did not meet basic security standards, so SwissBorg declined to use it. Solana transactions are valid for under two minutes, making manual external decoding impractical.

That is SwissBorg's defence. It is also an admission that it kept using a partner whose verification tooling it considered inadequate. [44]

Impact and response: fewer than 1% of users and about 2% of assets under management affected; the app and all other Earn programmes unaffected; SOL redemptions paused; SwissBorg committed its SOL treasury to compensate affected users, worked with white-hat researchers, exchanges and international agencies, and some stolen funds were blocked. Fazel called it "a bad day for SwissBorg." [41][42][43][45]

One thing that could not be confirmed, and it matters. Whether compensation was ultimately full or only covered "the majority." Early reporting said SwissBorg would cover most losses with final figures to be determined; later coverage says users were reimbursed. No source in this research confirms a settled final figure or that every affected user was made whole. Do not write "fully compensated" without checking. [41][42]

No breach of SwissBorg's own infrastructure has been reported in its operating history, and its custody environment was not compromised in this incident. [44]

But treat one marketing claim with care. Review content stating SwissBorg has operated "with zero security breaches since 2017" is misleading given a 41 million dollar loss, even if technically defensible on a narrow reading of what was breached.

Financials, legal record and credibility

SwissBorg is private and publishes no audited financial statements. Revenue, profit and valuation are not disclosed, there is no IPO and none announced. Total funding is reported at roughly 27 million dollars by Tracxn, which appears not to include the full CHF 50 million ICO. [4][6][7][9]

The company discloses profitability only indirectly, through the Sustainability Score that governs BORG buyback size and is influenced by "SwissBorg's overall financial health and profitability metrics." That is a governance mechanism rather than a disclosure, but it is the only public signal of financial performance. [40]

One claim to verify before repeating: that user funds are "insured up to $10 million depending on account level" appears in a single review with no primary confirmation and no insurer named. [23]

On the legal record, SwissBorg is clean. No enforcement action, fine, criminal proceeding or regulatory sanction surfaced in this research. Against Bybit, which has paid a €2.25 million Dutch fine, a ₹9.27 crore Indian penalty and a $228 million FTX settlement, and OKX, which pleaded guilty to a US felony and paid over $504 million, that is the single strongest point in SwissBorg's favour. Confirm it against the AMF, FINMA and Estonian FIU registers before stating it as fact, since absence in a general search is not proof.

Trustpilot sources conflict: 4.0 out of 5 in one January 2026 review, and roughly 3.2 out of 5 from around 1,900 reviews in another. Cite one with its capture date. Either way SwissBorg sits well above the exchange norm, where the same comparison puts Binance at 1.4 and MEXC at 1.6 to 1.8, and our own research found OKX between 1.9 and 2.9. App ratings from SwissBorg's own site footer: Google Play 4.2, App Store 4.6. [2][23][34]

Recurring complaints: account freezes and lengthy resolution times, withdrawal processing times, verification delays, and the cost of reaching premium tiers through BORG staking. [23][34]

How it compares

[11][17][21][36][46]

Relai, another app, also chose the AMF for its MiCA authorisation in October 2025. France has emerged as an active MiCA processing jurisdiction alongside Malta, Austria, Ireland and Luxembourg. [17]

The risks, stated plainly

1. Cost. At Standard rank you pay 1.49% per exchange, roughly fifteen times Bybit's spot fee and nearly nineteen times OKX's spot maker fee. The zero-spread framing is honest but does not close that gap.
2. The discount costs money. Lower fees require staking BORG, which means holding a volatile token whose value is tied to the platform's own success.
3. Third-party risk is the demonstrated failure mode. The Kiln breach lost 41 million dollars without anyone touching SwissBorg's systems. Earn products inherit the security of whoever runs the strategy.
4. Compensation scope is unconfirmed. Whether affected users were made whole in full is not established in public sources.
5. No conventional Proof of Reserves. The liabilities proof is strong; the reserves side depends on third-party dashboards.
6. Your regulator is in Paris. Complaints go to the AMF, not the HCMC.
7. Greece is not a priority market. Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands are. Localisation and support may reflect that.
8. No derivatives at all, which for most retail readers is a feature rather than a flaw. Say that too.

What we could not verify

Deliberately absent above: revenue, profitability, valuation and current headcount; whether Kiln-affected users were compensated in full; the "$10 million insurance" claim; whether USDT is available to EEA users post-migration; Greek-language interface and Greek-usable tax exports; the current registered-user count, since the 1 million figure dates to 2024; trading volume in any comparable form; whether any regulator has ever taken action; any HCMC or Bank of Greece notice; and the exact founding year.

Frequently asked questions

Is SwissBorg an exchange? No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. It is a wealth-management app that routes your orders to other venues. There is no order book, no leverage and no derivatives.

Is it legal in Greece? Yes. Greek residents are served by BlockNodes SAS under a MiCA licence passported from France. Your regulator is the French AMF.

Was SwissBorg hacked? Not its own systems. In September 2025 attackers compromised a GitHub token belonging to an engineer at Kiln, a third-party staking provider, and injected malicious code into Kiln's API. Roughly 41 million dollars in SOL was drained from SwissBorg's Earn programme. Fewer than 1% of users were affected.

Why is it so expensive? SwissBorg charges a visible fee rather than hiding costs in the spread, starting at 1.49% and falling to 0.25% at the top loyalty rank. That is retail-app pricing. If cost is your priority, an exchange will be cheaper even after the cashback programme.

What makes its licence unusual? It is one of very few MiCA authorisations covering investment advice and portfolio management. It does not cover operating a trading platform, which is why the meta-exchange model exists.

Should I trust the Proof of Liabilities? It is a genuine and well-argued mechanism, and you can verify your own balance with an Audit Credential ID from the app. But SwissBorg does not publish a conventional Proof of Reserves, relying on third-party wallet dashboards for that side, and its own disclaimer notes the data comes from its internal ledger.

Sources

All accessed 17 August 2026.

1. SwissBorg Help Centre, "What is SwissBorg?"
2. SwissBorg site footer and blog (entity details, MiCA licence number, app ratings)
3. The Org, SwissBorg leadership
4. Tracxn, SwissBorg company profile
5. EDHEC Alumni, interview with Cyrus Fazel, Sept 2021
6. Venturelab, "SwissBorg CEO Cyrus Fazel"
7. Crunchbase, SwissBorg
8. Craft.co, SwissBorg executives
9. CryptoRank, SwissBorg (BORG) profile
10. The Poor Swiss, "SwissBorg Review 2026", Jul 2026
11. Autorité des marchés financiers (France), white list entry: BLOCKNODES SAS, CASP licence A2026-011, granted 05/03/2026
12. SwissBorg, "In SwissBorg we Trust"
13. SwissBorg Help Centre, "Legal structure, jurisdiction and licenses"
14. SwissBorg via Medium, "SwissBorg Gains Membership of Financial Services Standards Association (VQF)", 2018
15. Goldblum, "Swiss Financial Regulation: FINMA and SRO"
16. Gofaizen and Sherle, "Crypto License in Switzerland, FINMA and SRO Licensing 2026"
17. Bitcoin.com News, "Swissborg Secures MiCA License From France's AMF", 14 Mar 2026
18. SwissBorg Help Centre, "SwissBorg MiCA Migration: What You Need to Know", Jun 2026
19. Crypto Briefing, "SwissBorg completes MiCA migration, previews new user incentives", 24 Jun 2026
20. SwissBorg, "SwissBorg Is Fully MiCA Compliant: Welcome Home to Europe", 22 Jun 2026
21. Bitbo, "Kraken vs Swissborg (2026)"
22. Finder UK, "SwissBorg review 2026"
23. The Moon Show, "SwissBorg Review 2026" (single-source claims on insurance and Trustpilot, verify)
24. BitDegree, "SwissBorg Review", 18 Mar 2026
25. SwissBorg, "SwissBorg Spells Trust"
26. SwissBorg, Proof of Liabilities audits
27. SwissBorg, "SwissBorg: Proof of Liabilities"
28. SwissBorg Help Centre, "How to Verify That Your Asset Balance Is Correct"
29. SwissBorg, "At SwissBorg We Prove"
30. DefiLlama, SwissBorg CEX transparency page
31. GitHub, SwissBorg/proof-of-liabilities
32. SwissBorg homepage
33. CoinGecko, SwissBorg (BORG)
34. Bitcompare, "SwissBorg Review 2026", 18 Jan 2026
35. Coin Bureau, "SwissBorg Review 2026", refreshed Feb 2026
36. SwissBorg, Pricing Policy
37. Finbold via MEXC News, "SwissBorg to launch $15M-backed cashback program", Sept 2025
38. Messari, SwissBorg project page
39. Coinbase, SwissBorg price page
40. SwissBorg, "SwissBorg Governance is stepping up"
41. Unchained, "Hackers Drain $41 Million From SwissBorg's Solana Earn", 9 Sept 2025
42. CryptoNews, "SwissBorg Hit by $41.5M SOL Hack After Partner API Compromise", 8 Sept 2025
43. Halborn, "Explained: The SwissBorg Hack (September 2025)", 15 Sept 2025
44. SwissBorg (Cyrus Fazel), "Security information about the Sep. 8th 2025 Kiln breach", 17 Nov 2025
45. Crystal Intelligence, "SwissBorg hacked for $41M in SOL after API breach", 10 Sept 2025
46. Paybis, "MiCA-Licensed Crypto Exchanges 2026"

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Information only. Not investment advice. Cryptocurrency markets carry substantial risk.