Swiss Group Floats Proposal to Mandate Central Bank for Bitcoin Reserves

A new proposal, seeking to constitutionally mandate the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet, was officially registered in Switzerland’s Federal Gazette on 31 December 2024.

Accumulating the Signatures

Giw Zanganeh, Tether’s Vice President of Energy and Mining; Yves Bennaïm, founder and chairman of the Swiss Bitcoin nonprofit think tank 2B4CH; and eight other Bitcoin advocates submitted the Bitcoin proposal for a “financially sound, sovereign, and responsible Switzerland.” The proposal was initially submitted on 5 December 2024.

If the proposal gathers 100,000 signatures within the next 18 months, by 30 June 2026, the Swiss government will be required to hold a public referendum on it. Switzerland has a population of 8.92 million, meaning around 1.12 per cent of its citizens must sign the petition to bring it to a referendum.

Bitcoin Adoption Booms

2024 was an excellent year for Bitcoin adoption. The year began with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the country’s stock exchanges. Additionally, crypto became a central topic in the US Presidential election campaign, with now President-elect Donald Trump referring to himself as the “First Bitcoin President.”

The hype around Bitcoin and its growing mainstream adoption pushed its dollar value beyond the significant milestone of $100,000.

In addition to the latest proposal in Switzerland, discussions in the United States about adding Bitcoin to the Treasury are also ongoing. Politicians in Brazil and Poland are entertaining the idea of Bitcoin reserves. Meanwhile, El Salvador and Bhutan remain the only countries with significant Bitcoin reserves.

The Russian Finance Minister recently confirmed that companies in the country are using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to settle international trade payments. President Vladimir Putin also emphasised that no government can ban Bitcoin.

With the governments of both Russia and the US supporting Bitcoin, the question arises: Is the US prepared to compromise its sanctioning leverage tied to the US dollar by adopting Bitcoin?