The Czech National Bank (CNB) purchased bitcoin for the first time in its history. The $1 million purchase marks a cautious but symbolic step by a European central bank into the world of digital assets.
The Czech National Bank said the small portfolio, set up outside its international reserves, is part of an experiment to gain hands-on experience with blockchain-based assets.
In addition to bitcoin, the wallet includes a US dollar-based stablecoin and a tokenized vault. Governor Aleš Michl said the goal is not to speculate or diversify reserves, but to learn.
“The goal was to test decentralized bitcoin from a central bank perspective and evaluate its potential role in diversifying our reserves,” he said. “We will inform the public about our experience on an ongoing basis and present an evaluation within two to three years.”
This echoes a move by Taiwan, whose central bank said it will study adding Bitcoin to national reserves and draft supporting regulations, starting with a pilot project using seized BTC.
Bitcoin as a cautious step, not a political change
The Czech National Bank stressed that this is not a change in its reserve management strategy. The experiment sits entirely outside the bank’s foreign reserves and will not affect its ability to intervene in currency markets or conduct monetary policy.
“The crown is our legal tender. The Czech National Bank will continue to keep inflation low and the crown strong,” Michl said. “But new ways of paying and investing will rapidly emerge in the coming years. As a central bank, we want to experiment with this.”
The test wallet will allow the Czech National Bank to explore the operational side of holding digital assets: from custody and key management to accounting, auditing and anti-money laundering procedures.
It will also simulate potential crisis scenarios and evaluate the security of multi-level approval processes. These are details that cannot be fully understood through theory or simulation alone, the bank said.
Testing the future of money
The project reflects broader curiosity among countries and central banks about how blockchain could reshape finance. Most research so far has focused on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The CNB initiative, however, considers public and private digital assets – including bitcoin – as real and investable instruments.
“The objective is to gain practical experience with technologies that could substantially influence the functioning of the financial and payments system in the future,” CNB said in its note.
In fact, the Czech central bank is conducting a small real-world experiment: what does it mean for a traditional financial institution to own, store and account for assets that live on open blockchains?
The composition of the portfolio – bitcoin, a dollar stablecoin and a tokenized deposit – allows the bank to compare three distinct categories of digital assets.
Bitcoin represents the decentralized side; stablecoins are private sector digital cash; and tokenized deposits hint at the future of regulated finance, the bank said.