The Czech National Bank (CNB) has bought 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, made outside of its international reserves, is part of an experiment to gain hands-on experience with blockchain-based assets.
Alongside bitcoin, the portfolio includes a U.S. dollar-based stablecoin and a tokenised deposit. Governor Aleš Michl said the goal isn’t to speculate or diversify reserves, but to learn.
“The aim was to test decentralised bitcoin from the central bank’s perspective and to evaluate its potential role in diversifying our reserves,” he said. “We’ll inform the public about our experience on an ongoing basis and present an assessment in two to three years.”
This echoes a move by Taiwan, whose central bank said they will study adding Bitcoin to national reserves and draft supportive regulations, starting with a pilot using seized BTC.
Bitcoin as a cautious step, not a policy shift
The Czech National Bank stressed this is not a change to its reserve management strategy. The experiment sits entirely outside the bank’s foreign reserves and won’t affect its ability to intervene in currency markets or conduct monetary policy.
“The koruna is our legal tender. The Czech National Bank will continue to keep inflation low and the koruna strong,” Michl said. “But new ways of paying and investing will emerge rapidly in the years ahead. As a central bank, we want to test this path.”
The test portfolio 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 can’t be fully understood through theory or simulation alone, the bank said.
Testing the future of money
The project reflects a broader curiosity among countries and central banks about how blockchain might reshape finance. Most research so far has focused on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The CNB’s initiative, however, looks at public and private digital assets — including bitcoin — as real, investable instruments.
“The purpose is to gain practical experience with technologies that may fundamentally affect the operation of the financial and payment system in the future,” the CNB said in its statement.
In effect, the Czech central bank is running 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 portfolio’s composition — bitcoin, a dollar stablecoin, and a tokenised deposit — lets the bank compare three distinct categories of digital assets.
Bitcoin represents the decentralised side; stablecoins are private-sector digital cash; and tokenised deposits hint at the future of regulated finance, the bank said.
