The president of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), Martin Schlegel, rejected the idea of holding Bitcoin in the context of central bank reserves in Switzerland, citing a lack of stability, liquidity and security, according to local media.
Addressing the Tamedia group, Schlegel cited three main concerns concerning cryptocurrencies. The first is their volatility, which, according to him, makes them inappropriate for the preservation of long -term value.
“Secondly, our reserves must be very liquid so that they can be used quickly for monetary policy if necessary,” Schlegel told Tamedia before pointing a lack of security inherent at the base of software assets. “We all know that software can have bugs and other weaknesses.”
The words of the president of the Swiss National Bank are involved in the midst of a growing debate in Switzerland on the emerging asset class. A recent initiative put pressure for a constitutional amendment forcing SNB to hold bitcoin in its reserves alongside gold, the article said.
The initiative, launched in December and directed by the entrepreneur Yves Bennaim, is not in detail with regard to Bitcoin allowances but specifies that it should be accumulated from the bank’s revenues. He has 18 months to collect 100,000 signatures in order to trigger a national vote on the subject.
Despite the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies by Switzerland, various Swiss banks offering customers related to cryptocurrencies, Schlegel rejected the asset class as a “niche phenomenon”. The currencies, he told Tamedia, were already in competition, and Schlegel argued that the bank was “not afraid of competition from cryptocurrencies”, citing the continuous force of the Swiss franc.
