While Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, rejected on Thursday the suggestion of her Czech colleague Ales Michl to include bitcoin in his country’s official reserves, the country has nevertheless chosen to seriously study the issue.

In a vote on Thursday, January 30, 2025, the Czech National Bank announced the creation of a think tank to consider and study the integration of Bitcoin into the country’s national reserves. Ales Michl had announced that he wanted to study the possibility of gradually converting 5% of the institution’s stock reserves into Bitcoin. This would represent a $7 billion acquisition. The Romanian and Polish central banks had already shown interest in this integration in the past. In the end, these statements never turned into action.

While Christine Lagarde has positioned herself against cryptocurrencies and their integration within national banks, the announcement of the Czech National Bank sounds like a willingness to confront.