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Policy

Swiss National Bank Owns No Bitcoin, but Could Buy in the Future, Chairman Says

While bitcoin today doesn't meet norms for currency reserves, said Thomas Jordan, there's no technical bar to purchases.

By Jack Schickler
AccessTimeIconApr 29, 2022 at 4:43 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 3:41 p.m. UTC
Swiss currency (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Swiss currency (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
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The Swiss National Bank (SNB) isn't currently interested in holding bitcoin (BTC), but could move quickly to do so at some point, said Chairman Thomas Jordan.

"Buying bitcoin is not a problem for us, we can do that either directly or can buy investment products which are based on bitcoin," Jordan said in response to a question at the SNB's annual meeting. "We can arrange the technical and operative conditions relatively quickly, when we are convinced we must have bitcoin in our balance sheet."

However, he added, "We do not believe bitcoin meets the requirements of currency reserves."

According to an annual report published in March, the SNB's reserves as of Dec. 31, 2021, came to just over CHF1 trillion (US$1.03 trillion). The U.S. dollar accounts for 39% of reserves, the euro 37%, Japan's yen 8% and the U.K.'s pound 6%. Gold holdings were just shy of CHF56 billion, or less than 6% of reserves.

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Jack Schickler
Jack Schickler

Jack Schickler was a CoinDesk reporter focused on crypto regulations, based in Brussels, Belgium. He doesn’t own any crypto.

Follow @jackschickler on Twitter

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