French Lawmaker Signs Petition to Allow Central Bank to Buy and Hold Bitcoin

A French parliament member has signed a petition to amend the laws to enable the central bank of France to buy and hold bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies. The petition urges lawmakers to urgently consider the matter, warning that not owning bitcoin will put France “in a financially weak position within 5-10 years.”

Petition to Allow Central Bank to Buy Bitcoin

Jean-Michel Mis, a member of the French National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, announced in a tweet Friday that he has signed a petition to amend the laws to enable the Banque de France, the country’s central bank, to buy and hold bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies.

The petition residing on the French Senate’s e-petitions platform was started on March 5 by François-Xavier Marie Jean Elder Thoorens; it can be signed until Sept. 5. Petitions with at least 100,000 signatures within six months are forwarded to the Conference of Presidents, which will decide whether to follow up on the matter. At the time of writing, 583 signatures have been lodged.

“Many companies now have acquired large sums (of the order of several billion euros) of bitcoin,” the petition states, naming Michael Saylor’s Microstrategy and Elon Musk’s Tesla as examples. It further notes that “Some public entities like the mayor of Miami are positioning themselves to be able to buy bitcoin.”

Moreover, “The reason given is the risk of a weak dollar over the next 5 years destroying medium-term financing capacities,” the petition continues, adding:

France cannot decently remain as an observer of a race which has already started. Not owning bitcoin will put it in a financially weak position within 5-10 years. It is urgent to take up the matter.

Emphasizing that France must adopt a strategy in this area and apply applicable laws to implement it, the petitioner wrote: “I, therefore, propose an update of the monetary and financial code to endow the Banque de France with the capacity to buy, sell and hold bitcoins and other crypto assets.”

The petition also points out that lawmakers “will have to adopt a strategy that will correctly assess the risks and propose reasonable crypto-asset holding ratios in the application of this strategy.”