The possibility of acquiring Bitcoin has been left open by the Swiss central bank, although its chairman Thomas Jordan stressed that at the moment it is not a scenario he is still considering.
“Buying Bitcoin is not a problem for us, we can do it either in a direct way or we can buy investment products based on Bitcoin” – he said in response to a question raised at the central bank’s annual meeting.
“We can regulate the technical part and the operational requirements quite quickly, whenever we are convinced that we ought to have bitcoin in our portfolio,” he noted. However, he stressed, “We do not believe that bitcoin qualifies as a reserve currency.”
Risks
It is worth noting that, as the European Banking Authority noted, banks in the Union have not yet been heavily exposed to cryptocurrencies to the extent that additional safety nets are needed to protect the economy.
The banking authority noted that cryptocurrency markets are still very small and regulation is still at a very early stage.
“The European Banking Authority considers that it is too early to adopt new macroeconomic tools to address the systemic aspects of these risks at this stage. It focuses on the need to monitor the cryptocurrency asset industry, in particular by identifying old and new mechanisms, sensitivities and risks that may make cryptocurrency assets a source of systemic risk or a threat to financial stability,” the authority noted.
