Chairman of Swiss National Bank hasn’t budged on bitcoin
The chairman of Switzerland’s national bank has criticized bitcoin’s (BTC) ability to perform as a currency reserve asset while also rejecting calls from crypto advocates to utilize it as an economic hedge.
As reported by Reuters, Chairman Martin Schlegel made the comments at the Swiss National Bank shareholder meeting on Friday. His concerns included cryptocurrency’s liquidity and its “very, very high” fluctuating prices.
He said, “Cryptocurrency cannot currently fulfil the requirements for our currency reserves.” Bitcoin campaigner and Bitcoin Suisse board member, Luzius Meisser, was also present at the meeting.
Meisser said that, while BTC “might not be worth much in scenarios that most of you consider normal,” he claimed it “will be worth a lot in the specific scenario of a multipolar world order with fading trust in government debt.”
Read more: Billionaire who introduced Tether to Northern Data leaves UK for Switzerland
Yesterday, Meisser told Reuters that a weakening of both the euro and dollar is more reason for Switzerland’s central bank to hold BTC. He said, “Politicians eventually give in to the temptation of printing money to fund their plans, but BTC is a currency that cannot be inflated through deficit spending.”
Messier supports a pro-BTC campaign that was launched last December by the Swiss federal chancellery. Its goal is to advocate for changes to be made to Switzerland’s constitution that would allow the country to hold BTC in its reserve.
However, Schlegel has remained against any of these proposed changes. In March, he told Swiss outlets that national reserves need to be “highly liquid” for monetary polices, and that, when compared to the global market, the market cap of crypto is relatively small and still “a niche phenomenon.”
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