“The aim was to test decentralised Bitcoin from the central bank’s perspective and to evaluate its potential role in diversifying our reserves,” said CNB Governor Aleš Michl in a statement.

The country’s investment in Bitcoin comes during an up and down year for the digital currency. It reached an all-time high price of about $125,000 last month, but has dipped about 19% to its current price of about $101,000. 

The Czech Republic’s central bank is the first to purchase Bitcoin directly, though a handful of other countries have already made owning crypto part of their economic policy.

Those include El Salvador, which in 2021 became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender, and the small Himalayan nation of Bhutan, which is one of the world’s largest sovereign holders of the digital currency. Kazakhstan, already a major player in Bitcoin mining, in September announced its plan to create a Bitcoin sovereign wealth found. 

In the United States, meanwhile, President Trump announced the creation of a strategic Bitcoin this year. The reserve will not see the U.S. purchasing Bitcoin directly, but instead it will supply the reserve by means of the proceeds of forfeitures and criminal seizures. 

The CNB said the amount it invested in digital assets will not increase and that they will present an assessment of the project to the public in about two or three years. 

The Czech Republic is a part of the European Union, but it uses its own currency called the koruna. The CNB said that it intends to keep its currency strong and has had internal discussions about the future of payments.

“Let’s be more forward-thinking, more visionary,” Michl said in the statement. “It is realistic to expect that, in the future, it will be easy to use the koruna to buy tokenised Czech bonds and more besides – with one tap an espresso; with another an investment such as a bond or another asset that used to be the preserve of larger investors.”