CoinDesk
Swiss campaigners are abandoning a bid to force the Swiss National Bank to hold bitcoin as part of its monetary reserves after collecting roughly half the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a national referendum. The initiative, listed by the Federal Chancellery as a proposed amendment to Switzerland's Federal Constitution, would have required the SNB to hold BTC alongside gold and foreign-currency reserves, without specifying an allocation.
Supporters had 18 months to gather signatures and frame bitcoin as a neutral reserve asset and a hedge against the dollar and euro, which together make up roughly three-quarters of the SNB's foreign-currency holdings. The campaign ultimately fell well short of the threshold needed to put the question to Switzerland's direct-democracy vote.
Why it matters
The collapse is procedural — a signatures miss, not a referendum loss — but the SNB had already rejected the underlying idea on substance, citing concerns about bitcoin's liquidity and volatility as a reserve asset held on its balance sheet. That means the campaign is ending on two fronts at once: it could not marshal the civic support to reach the ballot, and the central bank it wanted to influence had pre-emptively closed the door.
For the broader crypto-policy map, the failure removes what would have been a high-profile sovereign-bid experiment. Switzerland has been one of the more crypto-tolerant jurisdictions in Europe, so a successful push would have created a template other central banks would have had to engage with; the opposite — a quiet procedural death — sets no precedent either way.
Market impact
Near-term, no direct price effect: the SNB was never going to be a buyer, and the signature gap means the proposal is off the table for this cycle rather than actively contested. The read-through for $BTC is to the broader sovereign-reserve narrative — Bitcoin policy adoption now leans almost entirely on the United States, where state-level and federal reserve proposals are at very different stages. With Switzerland off the board, that concentration of the policy story is now the story.
Frequently asked questions
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Why did the Swiss bitcoin reserve campaign fail?
Campaigners collected only about half the 100,000 signatures required within their 18-month window to trigger a national referendum, falling well short of the threshold to put the question to a vote under Switzerland's direct-democracy system.
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What would the proposal have required the SNB to do?
The initiative, listed by the Federal Chancellery as a constitutional amendment, would have required the Swiss National Bank to hold BTC alongside gold and foreign-currency reserves. The text did not specify an allocation to bitcoin.
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What was the SNB's position on adding bitcoin to its reserves?
The SNB had already rejected the proposal before the signature deadline, citing concerns about bitcoin's liquidity and volatility as a reserve asset. The central bank closed the door on substance, separate from the campaign's procedural shortfall.
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How did supporters justify adding bitcoin to SNB reserves?
Campaigners framed bitcoin as a neutral reserve asset and a hedge against dollar- and euro-denominated holdings, which together make up roughly three-quarters of the SNB's foreign-currency reserves, according to Reuters reporting cited in the campaign.
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What does this mean for the broader bitcoin reserve narrative?
With Switzerland off the board, the sovereign $BTC reserve story is now almost entirely concentrated in the United States, where state-level and federal proposals sit at very different stages. A quiet procedural death sets no precedent either way.
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