Daniel Gasteiger, co-founder of Trust Square in Zurich

Gasteiger worked in finance for over two decades, at the interface between UBS and hedge funds, and was chief of staff to UBS chairman Axel Weber. He left the bank in 2015 and founded Nexussquared in Zurich, an advisory platform whose stated aim was to make Zurich and Switzerland a place where blockchain companies start and stay, as finews reported when Trust Square launched (in German).

The order of that career is the point for anyone in a bank reading this. He understood the committee, the risk sign-off and the vendor process before he started asking banks to put teams into a blockchain building, which is a different starting position from a founder arriving from outside finance.

Gasteiger founded Procivis in 2016 to digitize public sector services, with citizen identity as its subject: an identity a person holds on a phone and uses toward authorities and companies, with the data staying under the holder's control.

In September 2021 Orell Füssli, the Zurich company that prints Swiss banknotes for the Swiss National Bank, took a majority stake in Procivis after buying a minority stake the year before, and finews reported that Gasteiger stayed on to run the company. A banknote printer buying an identity software firm is the same logic in two formats: both businesses sell proof that something is genuine.

Gasteiger initiated Trust Square and was its president from the opening in April 2018, when it took 2,300 square meters over three floors on Bahnhofstrasse with about 200 workstations. Procivis was one of its first tenants, alongside the blockchain firm Lykke and usage agreements with the Swiss Fintech Innovation Lab that Thomas Puschmann led at the University of Zurich.

He also sits on the expert council of the Swiss Blockchain Federation, the body that represents the Swiss blockchain sector toward politics and administration. Trust Square itself lists the Swiss Blockchain Federation among its partners.

Gasteiger is known for putting a blockchain house in the Swiss banking quarter, at a distance from the token issuers in Zug. Trust Square ran as a privately held stock corporation with rents its founders described as attractive, filled its desks before opening, and kept a waiting list in its first year. He told finews the hub was fully booked (in German), with the insurance consortium B3i alone taking around 50 workstations.

He also set the house apart from Crypto Valley on subject matter: less on digital currencies, more on blockchain used inside existing industries, and later on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and the internet of things as well.

Daniel Gasteiger is a Swiss entrepreneur in Zurich, co-founder and former president of Trust Square, founder of the digital identity company Procivis and founder of the advisory firm Nexussquared. Before that he worked more than 20 years in finance, including as chief of staff to UBS chairman Axel Weber, and he left banking in 2015. Several other people share the name, among them a painter and a 19th-century engineer, so a search on the name alone returns a mix.

Daniel Gasteiger and Marc Degen founded Trust Square, and Gasteiger was its president from the opening. Greater Zurich Area names Marc Degen as co-founder and board member. The house opened on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse in April 2018, moved to Paradeplatz in January 2020, and its address today is Rennweg 57. The Trust Square page covers the company, its locations and its event formats.

Nexussquared is the Zurich firm Gasteiger founded in 2015 after leaving UBS, a blockchain advisory platform set up to help blockchain companies start and grow in Switzerland. Searches often write it as "Nexussquare" without the final d. It came before Trust Square and before Procivis, and the aim it stated, making Zurich a place blockchain companies pick, is what Trust Square later built in a building.