A central bank. And Bitcoin.
My speech at The Bitcoin Conference 2026 in Las Vegas on 28 April 2026. Video and text; the slide link is below:
Today, I want to talk about a strange combination:
A central bank. And Bitcoin.
Most people do not put these two things together. I do.
In monetary policy, a central bank must be conservative.
But it must think ahead.
When I became Governor of the Czech National Bank in mid-2022, inflation in my country was close to 20 percent. Twenty percent. It was a serious moment. When I took office, I said we would bring inflation back to 2 percent within two years.
And we did. Not with magic. With discipline. I said this clearly: Even before covid, money was too cheap for too long. For too long, the system promoted borrowing. For too long, the currency was weakened.
We changed that. We kept policy tighter for longer. We supported saving. And the koruna became strong. That, for me, is conservative monetary policy. Our rule is simple: stay hawkish forever.
We also manage very large foreign exchange reserves. Very large. We manage about 180 billion dollars in reserves. That is about 44 percent of GDP. Relative to the size of our economy, our reserves are among the largest in the world.
So we have to build the right portfolio for the future.
Here, you can see the long-term risk and return. It is based on Czech koruna data, the currency in which our books are kept. Bonds are at the low end. Low risk. Low return. Stocks and gold can offer higher returns. But they also bring higher risk.
The next point is the Czech National Bank’s portfolio. Over the past four years, we increased the share of equities from 15 to 26 percent. We also increased the share of gold from almost zero to 6 percent.
We built a diversified portfolio. A higher expected return than before. Lower risk than an all-stock portfolio. And even lower risk than an all-bond portfolio.
But then came the next question.
Can we do more?
Can we build an even stronger portfolio for the future
This is where Bitcoin comes in.
The first time I used Bitcoin, I bought a coffee in Prague about ten years ago. Today, that coffee comes to about 350 dollars. It was the most expensive coffee of my life.
Bitcoin has had very high returns. But honestly, it looks risky. It is much more volatile than other assets. One day, its price may be much higher. Or it could go to zero. Yes, zero.
And that is true for other assets too. A stock can go to zero. Even a bond can fail. That is why it is not wise to bet on just one asset.
We have to think about the whole portfolio.
The next point on the chart is what we found in our new analysis. This is our model portfolio with 1 percent in Bitcoin. And here comes the interesting part.
With 1 percent in Bitcoin, the expected return goes up. And the overall risk stays about the same. That is what our new study shows.
Why?
Because Bitcoin has low long-term correlation with many traditional assets. It does not move in the same way. And that matters. When you add an asset like this, the whole portfolio can work better. The return can go up. And the risk can stay about the same.
That is diversification.
Over the long term, Bitcoin can provide returns that are not closely linked to other assets. In some ways, it is similar to venture capital. But it is much more liquid.
So we started a separate test portfolio with Bitcoin.
A test portfolio. Not a revolution. Not a political statement. A test.
We will run it for two years. Then we will publish the results. Then we will decide what comes next.
Be conservative in monetary policy.
Be innovative in how we work.
This is the future.
@CNB_cz
https://t.co/AluJUgnrFF
So the "regulatory hurdles" for X Money's crypto plans are the NY CRYPTO Act and the Clarity Act.
One wants to criminalize unlicensed crypto businesses. The other wants to stop non-banks from offering yield.
Translation: incumbents are trying to legislate away competition before it launches. That's how you know it's a real threat.
@TheBlockCo The guy who built PayPal is now coming back to kill PayPal. This is the business equivalent of a movie villain returning in the sequel as the hero.
Goldman Sachs just filed for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF.
Covered calls on BTC, packaged as yield, sold to pension funds and retirees.
Two years ago, their CEO called Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme. Today, they're building structured products on top of it.
You're not early anymore. But you're not late either. You're right on time to watch Wall Street turn your conviction into their product.
A shoe company that lost 99% of its value just rebranded as "NewBird AI" and the stock went up 850% in a day.
They sold the shoe brand for $39M, raised $50M in convertible debt, and announced they're now a "GPU-as-a-Service provider."
If this sounds familiar, it should. In 2017 Long Island Iced Tea rebranded to Long Blockchain Corp. Stock jumped 275%. They got delisted a year later.
The playbook never changes. Only the buzzword does. Blockchain. Metaverse. AI.
This is not investing. This is a costume change on a sinking ship. Don't confuse a ticker symbol with a thesis.
46 days of negative funding on Binance BTC perps.
Everyone's positioned short while price grinds higher.
Last time this happened? Early 2023, right before BTC doubled.
The crowd is rarely right when it's this crowded on one side.
Kraken confirms IPO is still alive. Valuation down from $20B to $13.3B.
Most people see: weakness.
What I see: Deutsche Börse just paid $200M for 1.5% of a crypto exchange. A European legacy institution is buying into crypto infrastructure at what they clearly believe is a discount.
The smart money isn't leaving. It's repricing and re-entering.
Morgan Stanley now has the cheapest Bitcoin ETF in America at 0.14%.
BlackRock, Fidelity, and Morgan Stanley are all competing for your BTC allocation.
Meanwhile, most people still think Bitcoin is "too risky."
The risk isn't owning Bitcoin. The risk is having 100% of your wealth in one currency, one jurisdiction, one system — and thinking that's safe.
The last 40 days proved something uncomfortable:
No single jurisdiction is immune to geopolitical risk.
The people who came through this fine had:
- Multiple passports
- Banking in 3+ jurisdictions
- No single point of failure
Sovereignty isn't a destination. It's a system.
@laurashin Truth be told, I've seen research done by the crypto community when it actually mattered, and there's basically nothing you can hide once you're in the crosshairs. So the notion that a NYT reporter thinks he's finally solved it is hilarious.
The NYT says Adam Back is Satoshi.
Ever since we first met at a tiny Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas, maybe 150 people, the real OGs, I remember him just walking around with his hands behind his back, watching everyone with this proud little smile. Just... observing.
I'd tell people. "I think if Satoshi were here, this is how I picture him." The response was always the same. "It's probably a group of people." OK. "Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, maybe Adam was part of it." Sure.
These are some of the smartest people in crypto patiently explaining to me why I'm wrong. And look, they made great points. Very convincing.
So let me be very clear: @adam3us is not Satoshi.
(I have learned my lesson.)
@grok@ipsc_nz@RedLineNewsUSA That's what I just said. I just left out the words "officially" or "professionally" when I said "shovel the snow." But the rest is accurate.
@grok@ipsc_nz@RedLineNewsUSA It's only a bit of an exaggeration, but not as much as you make it seem. All non-essential traffic is banned, and if you wanna help shovel the snow, you really have to have all these documents on you. So while he's making fun of it, it's actually kind of sad.
@zdenekkubik72 To mi, prosím, řekni, o jaký dluhopis s výnosem 4.4 % měsíčně jde a já tam dám 90 % peněz. Bylo by to krásné, kdyby nám ta republika takhle tiskla peníze. :)
Some people keep saying “crypto isn’t ready for prime time.”
Meanwhile, the actual banking system is suffocating under regulation, de-risking, capital constraints, and tech that hasn’t been upgraded since the 90s.
And then you see something like this.
A developer in Argentina can now spin up, in minutes, what would take a traditional bank years and millions in compliance + licensing:
– create a wallet
– link it to a virtual bank account
– get paid globally via Deel
– auto-convert into stablecoins
– earn 6–7% yield with one click
– swap into tokenized equities or any on-chain asset
– issue a card against the entire stack
That’s not a “nice demo.”
That’s a challenger bank, built from the bottom up, without begging permission from legacy rails that are currently buckling under their own weight.
In a world where regional banks are fighting for survival and compliance costs are crushing innovation, this is the first time in history that a single developer can replace half of a bank’s value proposition with open infrastructure.
People underestimate how big this is.
The old system is fragile, slow, and geographically trapped.
This new system is global, programmable, and compounding.
The world is changing fast.
Developers are about to eat banking.
objects in mirror are closer than they appear
at today’s @Official_Cantor Crypto Conference, @ivanhodl showed how DeFi is turning the future of finance into present-day reality
If you want to know a thing or two about a supposed BNB supercycle, make sure to tune into this Space, which has seen some heavyweights from Binance, PancakeSwap, ASTER, BNB, TrustWallet, and other interesting projects in the cryptospace. https://t.co/T893MGj6zk
It's incredibly difficult to accept that Charlie Kirk has been killed, and that so many people are actually celebrating it, saying things like, "someone had to do it."
It's shocking that we now live in a society where people genuinely believe he "had it coming" for what he was saying in discussions. And he said it very eloquently—he didn’t attack people personally, he debated ideas.
I truly hope that one of the results of the AI revolution will be the end of the internet as we know it. Social networking was meant to bring us together, yet today it is arguably fueling feuds and dividing society at an accelerating rate.
I truly hope that our society will evolve to a point where the vast majority of people see killing someone over their beliefs as a despicable, evil act and not as something acceptable or even celebrated.
As the example of Ross Ulbricht shows, Charlie was a man who tried to do what he thought was right, and through his work ethic and brilliance, he became one of the most influential voices of our generation. I’m not afraid to say he was on a trajectory to possibly become presidential material. Unfortunately, someone might have agreed with me and didn’t like that prospect.
I truly wish that his death will not be in vain and that the US will be able to evolve and heal. It was clearly visible that @realDonaldTrump is angry and has the resolve to avenge Charlie's death. I pray that he will find the strength to do so in a way that Charlie would have wanted.
Like all of you, I am mourning Charlie Kirk. He stood up for his beliefs and died for them at 31, wearing a T‑shirt that read "Freedom."
At 31, my life was taken from me for standing up for what I believed in. And Charlie helped me get it back. He never took credit for it but he played a BIG role in my freedom in many ways. Last year alone, when President Trump won the election, he asked Charlie what was the #1 thing he could do for him and Charlie replied: "Free Ross." And in the days leading to my release, Charlie advocated for a full pardon. He did this and more without expectations of me.
I wish there was something I could do to help Charlie get his life back. But there isn't, and I'm heartbroken.
Charlie, I will always be grateful to you. Thank you for all you did for me and for our country. I pray for you and your beautiful family. Rest in peace.