Origin
Liechtenstein has identified great potential for the economy and the financial sector in blockchain technology. With the TVTG, Liechtenstein has created a legal framework that offers protection for users and legal certainty for companies.
"It is not often that a small state like Liechtenstein develops a comprehensive and important law for the economy independently, without any proposals from other States and without European regulatory requirements." (Head of Government Adrian Hasler on October 18, 2019)
If you look at the worldwide search history on Google Trends for the term blockchain between 2015 and 2020, a clear spike is evident. At the turn of the year 2017/2018 the term "blockchain" was on everyone's lips. At that time, a working group in Liechtenstein had been working on legislation in this area for about two years. It is, therefore, not surprising that the highest proportion of searches for the term blockchain occurred in Liechtenstein relative to the total number of searches worldwide.
Shortly after the peak in the number of searches, in May 2018 Liechtenstein officially announced that it would draft a comprehensive "Blockchain Act", according to the working title. The public consultation process had already been carried out from August 2018 onwards and was discussed for the first time in the Landtag (Parliament) in July 2019. After a second reading in the Landtag in October 2019, the TVTG came into force in January 2020.