A high-profile campaign to compel the Swiss National Bank to hold Bitcoin alongside gold and foreign-currency reserves has quietly collapsed — not from a referendum defeat, but from a failure to collect enough public signatures to even reach a vote. The Bitcoin Initiative, as organizers called it, needed 100,000 valid signatures to trigger a national referendum under Swiss direct democracy rules. It fell roughly 50,000 short.
The announcement came on Friday and was reported first by Reuters. Organizers confirmed they would drop the effort rather than continue collecting signatures past the campaign’s deadline.
Why It Matters
Switzerland sits at the center of European crypto policy. Zug, the country’s crypto-friendly canton, houses the foundations of Ethereum, Cardano, and dozens of other major blockchain projects. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has been among the more pragmatic regulators in Europe. A successful referendum that amended the Swiss constitution to require Bitcoin reserves at the SNB would have been a watershed moment — the first time a major central bank had been legally compelled to hold a cryptocurrency.
That didn’t happen.
What the Initiative Was Asking For
The campaign sought to add a clause to Switzerland’s federal constitution requiring the SNB to hold Bitcoin alongside its existing reserve assets — primarily gold, euros, and U.S. dollars. The SNB currently holds the world’s eighth-largest gold reserve by value, and the campaign argued Bitcoin, as a decentralized store of value with a fixed supply, deserved a similar constitutional acknowledgment.
Proponents drew comparisons to the successful “Save Our Swiss Gold” initiative of 2014, which, while ultimately defeated at referendum, demonstrated that Swiss voters were willing to engage with questions about the composition of national reserves.
The SNB’s Position
The Swiss National Bank has been unequivocal in its opposition. SNB officials stated publicly and on multiple occasions that Bitcoin’s price volatility makes it unsuitable as a reserve asset, and that the market lacks sufficient depth for the scale of transactions the central bank conducts. The SNB manages a balance sheet of roughly 700 billion Swiss francs — buying Bitcoin in a quantity that would be meaningful relative to that figure would itself move the market, officials argued.
“The SNB’s mandate is monetary policy stability,” one official said in a statement last year. “Reserve assets must be liquid, deep, and stable enough not to complicate the execution of that mandate.”
Bitcoin supporters contested each point, arguing that the asset’s liquidity has improved dramatically since institutional adoption accelerated, and that the SNB could begin with a modest allocation — 1-2% of reserves — to test the thesis without disrupting its balance sheet.
The Global Context
The Swiss failure is a blow, but it sits within a more complicated global picture. In the United States, several states have passed or advanced strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation. Arizona came close to becoming the first state to formally hold BTC as a reserve asset earlier this year before the governor vetoed the bill. New Hampshire has reportedly moved further in the legislative process.
At the federal level, the Trump administration’s executive order establishing a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — drawing from coins forfeited in criminal proceedings — has kept the concept alive in policy discussions, even if the scale remains modest.
El Salvador, which made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021, remains the only sovereign state to hold BTC as a primary reserve and payment asset, though its government has scaled back its mandatory-acceptance requirements under pressure from the IMF.
What Comes Next for the Bitcoin Initiative
Campaign organizers told Reuters they intend to regroup and potentially relaunch. The Swiss referendum system does not prohibit the same initiative from being resubmitted with a fresh signature drive. Whether public appetite for the idea will increase or decrease as Bitcoin’s price evolves is an open question.
The failure does not end the debate about central bank Bitcoin reserves globally. It simply means Switzerland — despite its crypto-friendly reputation — was not ready to enshrine the idea in its constitution. The SNB’s position remains unchanged: Bitcoin is not a reserve asset, and monetary stability depends on assets that don’t swing 20% in a month.
For Bitcoin advocates, the next battleground is likely to be smaller national treasuries or sovereign wealth funds willing to take a more experimental approach to reserve diversification.
FAQ
Why did the Swiss Bitcoin Initiative fail?
The initiative failed to collect the required 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a national referendum under Swiss direct democracy rules, gathering only approximately half that number.
What was the Swiss Bitcoin Initiative asking for?
It sought to amend Switzerland’s federal constitution to require the Swiss National Bank to hold Bitcoin in its national reserves alongside gold and foreign-currency assets.
Does any country’s central bank hold Bitcoin?
No major central bank currently holds Bitcoin as a reserve asset. El Salvador holds Bitcoin at the sovereign level, but it is a small economy, and El Salvador has scaled back some of its Bitcoin policies under IMF pressure.
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Sources: Reuters, CoinDesk, Bloomberg, BanklessTimes, Blockzeit
