In Switzerland, an effort by Bitcoin supporters to require the addition of Bitcoin to the country’s central bank reserves has failed. According to Reuters, the campaign will end after failing to collect the signatures needed to start a referendum.
Under an initiative called the Bitcoin Initiative, activists aimed to amend the Swiss constitution to require the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to hold bitcoins along with gold and foreign exchange reserves. Under Swiss law, 100,000 signatures were needed to start the referendum process. But weeks before the campaign deadline, only about half of the required signatures had been collected.
“We knew from the beginning that this was a difficult goal. For now, we will let this initiative take its course,” Yves Benaim, the initiative’s founder, told Reuters. But Ben-Naim insisted that the awareness raised by the campaign was critical to achieving long-term goals.
The SNB has previously said it is not keen on considering Bitcoin as a reserve asset. Citing cryptocurrencies’ high volatility and lack of market liquidity, the bank concluded that “virtual currencies do not meet the SNB’s reserve standards.” According to the SNB, reserve assets should be easily increased or decreased as needed and maintain their value.
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While some central banks around the world are exploring the idea of including digital assets in their reserves, different approaches are gaining traction. The Czech central bank reportedly bought around $1 million worth of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based assets last year to experiment with digital asset markets, but the European Central Bank has taken a more cautious approach, insisting its reserves must be “liquid, safe and secure.”
The recent fall in the price of Bitcoin has reignited this debate. According to data reported by Reuters, Bitcoin lost about 7.5% of its value by 2026. The rate of decline last year was 6.4%. Nevertheless, Ben-Naim insisted that Bitcoin does not have liquidity problems, saying that daily trading volume reaches tens of billions of dollars.
Bitcoin supporters believe the digital asset could help diversify the Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) foreign exchange reserves by reducing the weight of the dollar and euro in the currency. About three-quarters of the SNB’s foreign exchange reserves are made up of assets denominated in dollars and euros, but Benaim said: “Bitcoin is an alternative to dollars and euros and is an internationally neutral asset like Switzerland.”
*This is not investment advice.
