The Swiss National Bank won’t buy Bitcoin and similar digital currencies, even after President Donald Trump made a push to establish a strategic U.S. reserve.
“We do not have plans to buy crypto assets,” central bank chief Martin Schlegel told Bloomberg Television in Zurich on Thursday, citing large volatility as well as a lack of safety and of a robust legal framework.
Schlegel went on to explain that the SNB’s foreign-exchange reserves exclusively serve the goal of facilitating monetary policy. Crypto doesn’t fulfill the criteria of being useful for this, he said, echoing earlier comments.
“For example, it’s the preservation of value,” he said. “And as you know, crypto currencies have large fluctuations in value, so this is not a given.”
There also are “question marks” over the digital assets’ liquidity, Schlegel said, adding that as they are “basically software” that makes them prone to bugs.
The SNB is facing a popular initiative that seeks to force it to include Bitcoin in its reserves. If proponents manage to collect 100,000 signatures by June 2026, the country is required to hold a plebiscite on the issue.
While the central bank is pioneering a pilot for a wholesale central-bank digital currency, Schlegel has in the past taken a hard line against taking crypto on the balance sheet. Last November, he dismissed the assets as a “niche phenomenon.”
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Bastian Benrath-Wright, Bloomberg News
--With assistance from Brenda Kerubo and Federica Romaniello.
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
