Trade War Bolsters Calls for Swiss National Bank to Hold Bitcoin

Advocates of a referendum that would require the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to hold bitcoin in its reserves reportedly see an opportunity amid the current economic turmoil caused by U.S. tariffs.

Supporters of the Bitcoin Initiative said the turmoil shows how important it is that the SNB diversify its reserves, Reuters reported Thursday (April 24). 

“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.

Currently, the SNB holds no bitcoin, and three-quarters of its foreign currency holdings are in dollars and euros, the report said.

Advocates of the referendum say 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, per the report.

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

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

Switzerland has experimented with projects having to do with digital assets.

For example, the country has made moves in digital asset adoption under the Swiss Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Act, which enables tokenized securities and digital asset trading, PYMNTS reported in February.

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 in July at a forum in Zurich.

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.

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