Switzerland's central bank's proposal to allocate bitcoin reserves fails, signature fails to reach referendum threshold

A Swiss initiative to require the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to include bitcoin in official reserves failed due to insufficient signatures. The initiative was originally planned to promote a revision of the Swiss constitution to require the SNB to hold BTC reserves in addition to gold and foreign exchange reserves. According to regulations, the proponent needed to collect 100,000 valid signatures within 18 months to trigger a national referendum, but in the end only achieved about half of the goal, so he decided to give up advancing. Proponents have described Bitcoin as a "neutral reserve asset" and believe it can hedge against U.S. dollar and euro reserve risks. Currently, US dollar and euro assets account for about three-quarters of SNB's foreign exchange reserves. However, the SNB clearly opposed the proposal last year, citing the fact that Bitcoin's liquidity and volatility did not meet the central bank's reserve asset requirements.