First Central Financial institution in Europe Buys Bitcoin Months After ECB President Stated It Would By no means Enter Reserves

In January, European Central Financial institution (ECB) President Christine Lagarde stated, “Bitcoins gained’t enter the reserves of any of the central banks of the [ECB] Common Council.”

Nonetheless, lower than a yr later, the Czech Nationwide Financial institution (CNB) announced the acquisition of $1 million value of bitcoin and different digital belongings as a part of a pilot program.

Christine Lagarde insisted no European central financial institution would ever maintain #Bitcoin.

The Czech Nationwide Financial institution simply purchased $1 million value for its reserves. pic.twitter.com/cUWSot5XPB

— TFTC (@TFTC21) November 13, 2025

Whereas this bitcoin isn’t held within the CNB’s official worldwide reserves, it’s now one step nearer to creating {that a} actuality. CNB Governor Aleš Michl previously told the Financial Times about his need to place as a lot as 5% of the central financial institution’s reserves into bitcoin.

For now, the CNB has created a “take a look at portfolio” of digital belongings that features each bitcoin and a wide range of U.S. dollar-derived tokens. The financial institution will report on its experiences with these digital belongings over the following few years. In accordance with Michl, evaluating Bitcoin’s potential use inside the central financial institution’s reserves is certainly one of many goals of this new challenge.

This newest transfer from the CNB isn’t the primary time bitcoin has been a supply of embarrassment for Lagarde this yr, as simply final month, the ECB president was additionally confronted about previous statements concerning the cryptocurrency missing any kind of intrinsic worth. Bitcoin finally went on a run from roughly $35,000 to $125,000 since these feedback had been made, and the crypto asset now sits across the $100,000 mark.

Jordy asking Lagarde about her opinion on Bitcoin this week. Legendary!

The longer this goes on and the longer Bitcoiners confront central bankers, the extra folks will get up. pic.twitter.com/9oTWQHKHk0

— Dr. Jan Wüstenfeld (@JanWues) October 6, 2025

“There is no such thing as a underlying worth to it,” Lagarde doubled down through the current interview. “It could be that it prospers. It could be that it lasts ceaselessly. Nevertheless it could be that it collapses as properly.”

Lagarde additionally stated bitcoin couldn’t function as some kind of “digital gold,” however she does see promise in stablecoins or central bank-issued digital currencies. Notably, an ECB blog post additionally predicted the dying of Bitcoin in 2022 within the aftermath of the FTX catastrophe.

“Extra seemingly, nevertheless, [the recent stabilization around $20,000] is an artificially induced final gasp earlier than the highway to irrelevance – and this was already foreseeable earlier than FTX went bust and despatched the bitcoin worth to properly beneath USD16,000,” the weblog publish erroneously predicted.

Whereas a lot of Bitcoin’s early historical past was targeted on censorship-resistant funds, the event trajectory it has taken so far has clearly been extra targeted on the digital gold use case. And certainly, stablecoins appear to have extra promise for funds over the quick time period, as indicated by Money App’s recent integration with the dollar-backed tokens, regardless of Blocks CEO Jack Dorsey being a infamous bitcoin maximalist. That stated, Block additionally sees stablecoins as extra much like conventional fintech than Bitcoin, so they don’t seem to be essentially associated in any manner.

In fact, when you think about belongings similar to Technique’s STRC and Tether’s USDT, it’s clear that new digital currencies or different forms of secure belongings which might be no less than partially backed by bitcoin could possibly be the following path ahead for bringing the advantages of this know-how to extra customers with out even figuring out that bitcoin is concerned behind the scenes.

It’s changing into more and more clear to me that anticipating folks to undertake Bitcoin immediately is much like anticipating folks to run their very own e mail server as an alternative of utilizing Gmail.

Bitcoin service suppliers are the way in which ahead, no less than for the foreseeable future. It isn’t the top of…

— Kyle Torpey (@kyletorpey) October 11, 2025

Whereas some international locations have dabbled with bitcoin as an alternative choice to the fiat currency-dominated world monetary system, the actual fact of the matter is that the issuers of currencies such because the greenback and the euro nonetheless maintain great sway over the financial actions of smaller nations. For instance, El Salvador was persuaded to weaken its pro-bitcoin stance in trade for a mortgage from the Worldwide Financial Fund.

Opinions range when it comes to how the USA ought to take care of the emergence of bitcoin as a digital reserve asset that might doubtlessly compete with the U.S. greenback in that regard. Again in 2021, former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared her view that bitcoin could possibly be an rising menace to U.S. greenback dominance. U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman has shared the same sentiment when railing in opposition to bitcoin on the Home ground.

the video of @BradSherman‘s name to ban bitcoin is one of the best commercial for the digital asset i’ve seen in fairly a while (HT Oskar_Koch on Reddit) https://t.co/KeGCO0uXSh pic.twitter.com/VDF6XxBFre

— Kyle Torpey (@kyletorpey) May 9, 2019

Alternatively, U.S. President Donald Trump and others have indicated that the mixture of bitcoin with stablecoins may assist strengthen the U.S. greenback within the data age. Though Trump at the moment seems preoccupied with profiting from shitcoin sidequests.