Swiss National Bank rejects Bitcoin again as a reserve currency
An official of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) rejected claims that the institution should add Bitcoin to its reserves in order to secure against the ongoing macroeconomic turbulence.
According to one Message During a shareholder assembly in Bern, the President of the Swiss National Bank, Martin Schlegel, emphasized from Reuters dated April 25 that “cryptocurrencies are currently unable to meet the requirements for our currency reserves”. These words come in the middle of the growing pressure of the local crypto industry, Bitcoin (BTC) add to the reserves of the central bank.
The activist Luzius Meisser, board member of the crypto broker Bitcoin Suisse, told opposite Reutersthat “keeping Bitcoin makes more sense when the world moves in the direction of a multipolar order”. He claimed that the necessity is now even more urgent because “the dollar and the euro become weaker”.
This is not the first time that Schlegel defends itself against this idea. In reports from the beginning of March, Schlegel was cited with the words that he did not want to make Bitcoin in Switzerland a reserve asset and justified this with a lack of stability, liquidity problems and security risks.
Swiss initiative for Bitcoin as a central bank reserve
On the last day of 2024, the Swiss Federal Chancellery initiated a proposal to constitutional the Swiss National Bank to keep Bitcoin in its balance sheet. However, the proposal only has to collect 100,000 signatures to trigger a referendum in Switzerland.
The initiative calls for a change in the third paragraph of Article 99 of the Constitution. The corresponding text is currently:
“The Swiss National Bank forms sufficient currency reserves from its yields; part of these reserves is kept in gold.”
If successful, the campaign would lead to adding “and in Bitcoin” at the end of the paragraph. The non-profit Swiss Bitcoin Denkfabrik 2B4CH, which was responsible for the preparation and submission of the documents, was involved in the initiative. 2B4ch had some connections to heavyweights in the industry: Giw Zanganeh, Vice President of Energy and Mining at the leading StableCoin emittent Tether, also helped to start the campaign.
The campaign continues
Meisser claims that owning Bitcoin would free the central bank from the political influence of its foreign currency stocks, most of which are kept in US dollars and euros. According to him, “politicians finally give up to print money to finance their plans, but Bitcoin is a currency that cannot be bloated by deficit editions”. The founder and chairman of 2B4ch, Yves Bennaïm, said Reuters:
“We don't say that you should put fully on Bitcoin, but if you have almost 1 trillion francs on reserves like the SNB, it makes sense to have 1 to 2 % of it in an asset that increases in value, becomes safer and everyone wants to own.”
Switzerland is a hub for blockchain companies. The “Crypto Valley” in the city of Zug is known to be the place where Ethereum was founded. The country continues to produce crypto initiatives. The global food giant Spar introduced Bitcoin-based payments in a Swiss city at the beginning of this month.
The Crypto Valley has now exceeded the rating brand of $ 593 billion and thus shows the growth path of the blockchain industry in the region in 2024. Last year, 17 crypto startups were created in the region, which gained the status of a unicorn.
