Bitcoiners See Opportunity to Add Bitcoin to Swiss National Bank's Reserves

Advocates of a referendum that would require the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to hold bitcoin in its reserves

output: A referendum that would require the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to hold bitcoin in its reserves is on the agenda for 2024 and advocates see an opportunity amid the current economic turmoil caused by U.S. tariffs, a report said Thursday (April 24).

As the trade war continues to escalate, supporters of the Bitcoin Initiative said the turmoil shows how important it is that the SNB diversifies its reserves, Reuters reported.

“Holding bitcoin makes more sense as the world shifts towards a multipolar order, where the dollar and the euro are weakening,” Luzius Meisser, a board member of cryptocurrency broker Bitcoin Suisse and supporter of the referendum, said in the report.

The referendum campaign was launched in December and aims to add the bitcoin requirement to the Swiss constitution, according to the report.

The SNB does not hold any bitcoin and three-quarters of its foreign currency holdings are in dollars and euros, the report stated.

Those in favor of the referendum said bitcoin holdings would reduce political influence on the value of the SNB’s foreign currency holdings, reduce the temptation politicians feel to print money to fund their plans and provide the bank with an asset that is increasing in value, according to the report.

But the SNB is skeptical of bitcoin, pointing to the cryptocurrency’s price swings, liquidity concerns and security risks, the report stated.

SNB Chairman Martin Schlegel told a Swiss newspaper in March: “Cryptocurrencies are essentially software. And we all know that software can often have bugs and other vulnerabilities.”

Switzerland has been experimenting with projects having to do with digital assets. For example, the country has been making moves in digital asset adoption with the Swiss Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Act, which enables tokenized securities and digital asset trading, as PYMNTS reported.

The country is also making progress in rolling out its own central bank digital currency (CBDC). In July, it was reported that the Swiss National Bank was amenable to expanding its digital currency project.

“We would like to see a project which develops, with more banks joining and a higher volume of transactions,” governing board member Antoine Martin said at a forum in Zurich.

But in May, it was reported that the central bank was already conducting a pilot that used a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and successfully settled four tokenized bond issuances and one secondary market transaction.