📅 Original post: March 2024 | Last updated: May 2026 CV Labs tenant and incorporation figures drawn from CV VC official data (published May 2025, covering 2024 results). Trust Square figures from official site as of early 2026.
The building that calls itself the heartbeat of Crypto Valley sits on Dammstrasse 16, a two-minute walk from Zug train station. It is not hard to find. The question worth asking before you commit to a desk there is whether the claim holds up when you look past the tagline.
This is a field note on what the Zug co-working scene actually looks like in practice — the density that CV Labs represents, what its community events are actually like, why some crypto companies in Zug choose not to be there, and where Trust Square fits into the picture as the Zurich alternative that comes up in almost every comparison conversation.
What CV Labs Actually Is (And What It Is Not)
Start with the structure, because conflating CV Labs and CV VC is a common source of confusion.
CV VC is the venture capital fund — the entity that invests in blockchain startups and publishes the annual Crypto Valley Top 50 report alongside CVA. CV Labs is the ecosystem builder arm: co-working spaces, an accelerator program, event programming, and domicile registration services. The two are operationally linked. When a company walks into CV Labs, it is walking into CV VC’s orbit — the same building, the same brand, and an implicit adjacency to the fund’s deal flow.
That adjacency is not incidental. It is the actual value proposition. A desk at CV Labs is not just a desk. It is proximity to the people who write checks, to the founders who have already taken those checks, and to the infrastructure — legal, financial, regulatory — that Switzerland built for exactly this kind of company.
The 200+ tenant figure is the one CV Labs leads with. It is worth contextualizing against the broader ecosystem: CV VC’s own data puts Crypto Valley at 1,749 active blockchain companies, with Zug hosting 41% of the total — roughly 719 companies in the canton. CV Labs’ 200+ tenants represent a meaningful slice of that, approximately 11% of the entire ecosystem and close to 28% of Zug-based companies, depending on how you count domicile registrations versus working tenants.
The Domicile Question: How Many Are Actually There?
This is the part that the summary statistics do not tell you.
CV Labs offers domicile registration — a perfectly legal Swiss mechanism that lets a company register its official address at CV Labs’ Dammstrasse 16 address without physically using the space day-to-day. The company gets a Zug address, canton Zug tax treatment, and a Swiss registered office. It may never send an employee to sit at a CV Labs desk.
No one at CV Labs publishes a breakdown of working tenants versus domicile-only registrations in their public-facing materials. The “200+ tenants” figure almost certainly includes both categories. That is not a criticism — domicile services are a legitimate part of what makes CV Labs useful, and they contribute to the ecosystem density that gives the building its gravitational pull. But if you are evaluating co-working options and imagining the hallways filled with 200 founders ready to pitch or be pitched, you may be imagining something denser than what you will actually find on a Tuesday afternoon.
What you will actually find: a functional, professional co-working environment where people who work in blockchain happen to be your desk neighbors. Not every conversation is a deal. Not every face is a founder. The ratio of people doing actual quiet work to people having animated startup conversations probably looks similar to any co-working space where the average member cares about the industry.
The Coffee Morning: What the Community Events Are Actually Like
CV Labs runs what it calls coffee mornings — informal gatherings where founders, advisors, and people from the broader ecosystem show up, have coffee, and talk. No slides, no formal agenda, no admission badge. The format exists at monthly intervals and is one of the better-regarded regular formats in the Zug community precisely because it does not try too hard to be structured.
The honest version of how these events work: they are as good as the room that day. Some mornings the room has three people from the same accelerator cohort and one interested journalist. Some mornings there is a meaningful density of founders across funding stages, and the conversations actually go somewhere. The format does not guarantee outcome — it creates the conditions for it.
The CV Summit, which CV Labs co-organizes, is a different scale entirely — 3,000+ attendees, two days, structured tracks and networking sessions. But that is an annual event, not the fabric of daily life in the building.
Why Some Crypto Companies in Zug Are Not at CV Labs
The answer is usually one of three things.
They predate CV Labs. Several of Zug’s established blockchain companies were incorporated before CV Labs existed in its current form, or at a time when the building’s reputation was still being established. They have their own office arrangements — often in the same radius around the train station — and the cost-benefit of moving to a co-working model never made sense.
They have grown past the format. A company that started with two founders sharing a hot desk and has since hired fifteen people will often move to a dedicated leased office in Zug or nearby. CV Labs works well for the early-to-mid stage. At a certain headcount, the density advantages get outweighed by the noise and layout constraints of shared space.
They are using domicile elsewhere. Not every registered company in Zug is trying to build community. A token foundation that needs a Swiss address and FINMA-legible structure may register a domicile with a Zug fiduciary service or law firm rather than CV Labs, handle its banking through SEBA or Sygnum, and have its actual working team in Lisbon or London. The canton is the address; the co-working is optional.
| Space | Location | Crypto-specific | Best for | Notable limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CV Labs | Dammstrasse 16, Zug | Yes | Early-stage blockchain founders, domicile + community | Density varies; domicile ≠ working presence |
| Trust Square | Rennweg 57, Zurich | Yes (broader: blockchain + cyber + AI) | Zurich-based founders, 300 events/year | Different city — not Zug ecosystem specifically |
| Spaces Zug | Central Zug | No | Professional, flexible; all sectors | No crypto community overlay |
| Dedicated lease | Various Zug | N/A | Companies past early stage | Higher fixed cost; you manage your own community |
Trust Square: The Zurich Alternative and Why the City Gap Matters
Trust Square sits at Rennweg 57 in Zurich — 350+ workstations across 3,500 square meters, close to 300 events per year, and a community that spans blockchain, cybersecurity, and AI. It is, in many respects, the Zurich counterpart to CV Labs: a specialized hub for tech-adjacent companies in a city that is otherwise dominated by traditional finance.
The difference that matters practically is geography, and geography in the Swiss blockchain context is not trivial.
Zug and Zurich are 30 minutes by train. On paper that is nothing. In practice it determines which regulatory conversations you have by default, which lawyers you bump into at lunch, and whether your company’s public narrative is “we’re in Crypto Valley” or “we’re in Zurich.” Those are not the same narrative for the purposes of business development, press coverage, or fund conversations with Crypto Valley-aligned investors.
Trust Square hosts close to 300 events per year and has a genuine community. If your company’s stakeholders are spread across Zurich’s finance and tech scene rather than concentrated in Zug’s crypto-specific ecosystem, Trust Square may be the more relevant option. If you need the Zug address — for tax registration, FINMA proximity, or the shorthand credibility of “we’re in Crypto Valley” — Trust Square does not provide that.
The companies that use both are real. A founding team with one partner in Zurich and one in Zug sometimes ends up with memberships at both. It is not the most economical arrangement but it reflects the actual geography of how Swiss crypto ecosystem relationships work.
The Honest Assessment: Is the Hype Real?
CV Labs is what it says it is — the most concentrated point of the Crypto Valley ecosystem in physical form. The 200+ tenant count is real. The event programming is real. The adjacency to CV VC deal flow is real. The “heartbeat of Crypto Valley” framing is not hyperbole if you are using CV Labs the way it is designed to be used.
The hype is in the gap between “200 companies are registered here” and “200 active founders are working in this building every day.” The domicile reality means the actual working density on any given day is lower than the headline tenant count implies. The coffee mornings are useful but not magic. The co-working environment is professional and blockchain-specific, which distinguishes it from general co-working, but it does not replace intentional relationship-building.
What is genuinely real is the incorporation momentum. CV Labs recorded 38 new company incorporations in 2024, a 124% year-on-year increase. That figure is directional evidence of something: the Zug address still matters to founders setting up Swiss structures, and CV Labs is the path of least resistance for obtaining it quickly. Whether those founders are in the building or just on the letterhead is a separate question.
For someone deciding whether to base in Zug at CV Labs: the co-working infrastructure is solid, the events create real serendipity if you show up consistently, and the domicile service provides Swiss structure on a timeline that a solo founder can manage. The expectation to calibrate is not “I will walk in and be surrounded by 200 crypto founders” — it is “I will have a professional space and a useful community if I invest the time to use it.”
FAQ
Is CV Labs actually in Crypto Valley, or is it the brand attached to a regular co-working space?
It is both, and the dual nature is the point. CV Labs is a co-working space in Zug operated by a venture fund (CV VC) that is itself a central node in the Crypto Valley ecosystem. The “Crypto Valley” framing is not just marketing — the physical proximity to CV VC partners, the accelerator program, and the event community create a legitimately different environment from a general co-working brand that happened to open a location in Zug. But it is still a co-working space. The ecosystem adjacency is real; it is not a guarantee of deal flow or investor introductions.
What is the difference between CV Labs and Trust Square for a crypto founder choosing between Zug and Zurich?
CV Labs provides a Zug address and access to the Crypto Valley-specific network. Trust Square provides a Zurich address and access to a broader blockchain, cybersecurity, and AI community with more event density (close to 300 events per year). The choice is more about which city’s ecosystem you need to be embedded in than about the co-working format. For FINMA proximity and “Crypto Valley” positioning, Zug and CV Labs. For Zurich’s finance and fintech connections, Trust Square.
Can I use CV Labs just for a domicile address without actually working there?
Yes — CV Labs explicitly offers domicile registration as a standalone service. You register your Swiss company at Dammstrasse 16, pay for the domicile service, and have a legal Zug address without renting a desk. This is a legitimate and widely-used option for blockchain companies that need Swiss structure but have their working team elsewhere. It also explains part of why the published tenant count looks higher than the building’s working density on any given day.
How often do the coffee morning events happen, and are they worth attending?
CV Labs runs community events at approximately monthly intervals, including the coffee morning format. Attendance quality varies — some months the room has meaningful ecosystem density, some months it does not. The format works best as part of a consistent local presence rather than as a one-time visit. If you are based in Zug and attend regularly, the accumulated ambient knowledge about who is raising, hiring, or moving is genuinely useful. If you are flying in from abroad hoping for a warm intro in a single visit, manage expectations accordingly.
For more on the broader ecosystem that gives CV Labs its context, the 2026 Crypto Valley snapshot covers the 1,749-company figure in detail. The Ethereum origin story covers how Zug became the address of choice before any of this infrastructure existed.