LAS VEGAS: Czech Republic’s top central banker Ales Michl says that adding bitcoin to the bank’s official reserves could improve the performance of the portfolio, the latest comment that suggests the institution continues to seriously consider diversifying into digital assets.
While bitcoin is risky and very volatile, it has had strong returns as an asset, said Michl, speaking at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas.
A Czech central bank study from February showed that a model portfolio with 1% in bitcoin had higher expected returns without increasing the overall risk, because of the cryptocurrency’s low long-term correlation with many traditional assets, he said.
“When you add an asset like this, the whole portfolio can work better,” he said.
“Return can go up, and risk stays about the same.”
Bitcoin, which accounts for about 60% of the crypto sector’s market value, rose as much as 1.9% to US$77,895 on Wednesday.
It’s up roughly 18% since the start of the Iran war – outpacing the S&P 500’s 3.6% return – but is still down roughly 40% from October, when it reached an all-time peak of more than US$126,000.
Czech Republic’s central bank holds one of the largest reserve piles in the world relative to the size of the economy, worth US$180bil and representing around 44% of gross domestic product.
After Michl took the top job in 2022, the central bank has boosted the portion of stocks in its reserves and increased gold holdings.
The Czech National Bank made its first-ever purchase of cryptocurrencies last year, then worth US$1mil, creating a test fund for digital assets that would help it learn about the digital currencies.
Those holdings, consisting mainly of bitcoin alongside unspecified dollar-based stablecoins and tokenised dollar deposits on the blockchain, are kept separate from the official foreign reserves.
“We will run it for two years,” said Michl.
“Then we will publish the results. Then we will decide what comes next.” — Bloomberg
