• Earlier last year, Swiss National Bank officials concluded that Bitcoin has not yet met the set requirements to be added to their balance sheet as a reserve currency.
• Bitcoin price has dropped approximately 33 percent since April last year to trade around $28k.

The Bitcoin market has grown over the years to a global community of over 56 million holders. Trading around $28k on Friday, Bitcoin has attracted institutional investors for outperforming traditional market equities. According to market data provided by TradingView, Bitcoin price is up approximately 70 percent YTD, Gold has gained about 9 percent, while the Dow Jones has only added 1 percent since the calendar flipped.

As a result, publicly traded companies have been slowly adding Bitcoin among other crypto assets to their balance sheet. According to market data provided by Coingecko, a total of 174,374 Bitcoins are held by publicly traded companies around the world. 

The largest share is held by MicroStrategy Inc. with approximately 129,699 Bitcoins, worth about $3.6 billion. Others include Coinbase Global and crypto mining companies like Marathon Digital. However, the global banking industry has not invested in Bitcoin due to regulatory constraints.

Swiss Banks on Bitcoin

The banking industry in Switzerland has experienced significant challenges in the recent past. Already, Credit Suisse collapsed and was taken over by UBS under the government’s watch. In their defense, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) blamed the Credit Suisse leadership for the collapse of the second-biggest bank in the country. 

As a result, Swiss banks have begun looking into the Bitcoin and crypto market to ensure future growth prospects. For instance, PostFinance, the fifth-largest financial services company in Switzerland, is set to offer cryptocurrency services to over 2.69 million customers through a partnership with Sygnum Bank.

In a recent TV interview, the Vice President of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) Martin Schlege noted that Bitcoin is very interesting. 

Earlier last year, Swiss National Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan said at the central bank’s annual general meeting that the Bank is against holding Bitcoin as a reserve currency. During the meeting, Jordan added that the Bank is not yet convinced that Bitcoin meets the set requirements for a reserve currency.

“Buying bitcoin is not a problem for us, we can do that either directly or can buy investment products which are based on bitcoin,” Jordan said. “We can arrange the technical and operative conditions relatively quickly when we are convinced we must have Bitcoin in our balance sheet.”

Bigger Picture 

The Bitcoin price has significantly benefited from the global banking crisis, which began with three United States regional banks. Notably, investors have been fleeing the banking industry to self-crypto custody. As a result, the United States federal government has identified the decentralized financial ecosystem as a threat to national security. Moreover, former president Donald Trump admitted the United States dollar is losing its position as a global reserve currency.