Topics covered

• What are popular initiatives?
• Who can set up an initiative?
• Reasons to set up an initiative
• The process from start to finish
• How the Swiss abroad can get involved
• How expats living in Switzerland can get involved
• The Bitcoin Initiative and its aims

 

Who We're Speaking With

Yves Bennaïm has been studying Bitcoin for the last 12 years and teaching about Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain for the last six years. He teaches all kinds of people from university students to bankers, journalists, lawyers, and even companies. He also contributes a column to Bilan magazine, and from time to time, he writes for other publications.

Yves is currently on the committee of the Bitcoin Initiative. This popular initiative aims to require the Swiss National Bank to hold Bitcoin alongside gold as part of its monetary reserves.

 

About the Episode

Anyone who can vote in Switzerland has the right to launch a popular initiative. This gives individuals a lot of power and control over the way Switzerland is run. However, the process is complex and takes several years. Here are the required steps:

1. Determine the desired changes: The first step is to decide how you would like to change the Swiss constitution. You might only need to amend a few words, or you might want to add a new article and change several existing ones.
2. Put together a committee: A committee consists of 7 to 27 people who are eligible to vote in Switzerland. The more diverse and representative of Switzerland the committee is, the better.
3. Register with the Federal Chancellery: The Chancellery checks the initiative and makes sure that no part of it is frivolous or unconstitutional, as this could put your initiative at risk. They provide templates and help you refine and translate the changes you want to make to the constitution.
4. Gather signatures: You can start collecting signatures as soon as the initiative has been published in the Federal Gazette. You need to collect 100,000 valid signatures in 18 months.
5. Submit signatures to the councils: Each signature has to be validated by the local council/commune of the person who signed.
6. Submit signatures to the Federal Chancellery: The Chancellery will count and verify your signatures. If you have 100,000 valid signatures, your initiative will be debated by the Federal Council and Parliament and then put to vote.
7. Campaign: Once the vote has been announced, it’s important to provide voters with information about your initiative, so they can understand your point of view and make an informed decision.

 

Resources

Bitcoin Initiative Website

Current popular initiatives in the signature-collecting phase

Swiss government info on popular initiatives

Yves’ website

Yves on LinkedIn

Yves on Twitter/X

Yves’ articles

 

Next steps

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Transcript

Kathrin: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Living in Switzerland. The series is brought to you by Rigby. We are a staffing and project services company based in Zurich. If you or anyone you know of is looking for a new role in Switzerland, or if you're looking to hire, let us know. We'd be happy to help.

The best way to do that is by going to rigby.ch/apply and filling out the form. Then, if we have anything that might be of interest, we'll gladly let you know. Today we are once again joined by Yves Bennaïm, who already spoke to us in a previous episode about Bitcoin in Switzerland. In this episode, he will talk about the Bitcoin initiative, a popular initiative currently in the signature collection phase.

Yves has been studying Bitcoin for the last 12 years and teaching about Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain for the last six years. He teaches all kinds of people from university students to bankers, journalists, lawyers, and even companies. He also contributes a column to Bilan magazine, and from time to time, he writes for other publications.

Yves, welcome once again to the show!

Yves: And thank you for having me again.

Kathrin: All right, so today we're talking about a popular initiative that you're involved in, so the Bitcoin initiative. Before we start, maybe you can just briefly recap what a popular initiative is in Switzerland.

Yves: So, briefly, in Switzerland we have direct democracy, which means that the people can make choices, and of course we elect people who can make choices on our behalf.

But we can also directly influence our constitution and the way the country is run. Also the country, but also the cantons, the states, the communes. So, we like, individuals have a bigger say on their environment and their community.

So, a popular initiative is a way for people to gather signatures of other people, citizens, voters, to say, there is something that should be changed.

We want that the whole population of Switzerland can vote on this. So instead of coming from the government telling us, do you want this, do you want that? We say, we want this, and let's ask the rest of the population.

So, a popular initiative is very straightforward to set up. Of course, you have a lot of, like, little details that you need to do properly.

Again, the outcome is that it's gonna change the constitution. So you can't just go with crazy ideas and make it frivolous. Also, you can't do anything that would be immoral or illegal or anything like that would be crazy. But one good example in the past was to abolish the military service, for example.

So, this is something that people would say, we feel very strongly about it, and we think that it's worth having a debate. It's worth having an actual referendum, a vote. What happens is that you have 18 months during which you try to gather 100,000 signatures from citizens, voters. And if that happens, it goes to the government, which will look at it, evaluate if they support it or not, because sometimes they don't. If they don't support it, maybe they want to propose a counter project, which would maybe be similar, but I don't know, less destructive or less crazy because they think that it's a good idea, or maybe they just encourage the population to vote against it, straight out. And then after that, of course you have a vote. And then the people in the canton need to have the majority, and if they do, then the constitution is amended.

Kathrin: Okay. But this doesn't happen so often, does it? So, most initiatives eventually fail, don't they?

Yves: Exactly. So, a lot of initiatives are technically a good idea, but they don't succeed in convincing people. So, either, they don't convince people at the signature level. People say, it's a good idea, but I don't really care, and I don't think we should be wasting our time with that. Or they don't succeed at the vote level, people say it is a good idea, but I don't think we should change the constitution and go that far for such an idea.

There is also a lot that can be having an impact on the government, who will be pushing for a change. But they are short circuiting the vote and they say, you know what? We think this is a good idea, we think this could be included in something else that we're working on. And there is quote unquote some kind of negotiation. And then you can remove, the committee can remove the initiative, even though they got 100,000 thousand signatures. But because there is a will and an enthusiasm from every party to move forward, it's not necessary to have the whole campaigning.

Kathrin: Right. To go through the process.

Yves: Because at the end of the day, everybody's on the same page. So, this is also one thing.

Kathrin: Yeah. But I suppose it's very different to have a hundred thousand people excited about an idea and then to have the millions it takes for, actually, the vote to go through.

Yves: Of course.

Kathrin: So, a lot of things have maybe a hundred thousand supporters, but maybe not half the population. So, it is challenging.

But it has happened before that they have gone through.

Yves: Well. It happens regularly. But also, you have to think about what the purpose is. You have different kinds of initiatives. So, for example, our initiative doesn't come from a political party. Many popular initiatives are actually supported by a political party or come directly from a political party.

So you have to also think that some political parties want a debate on a certain topic. It helps their agenda, it helps something that they want to move forward with. So they don't really care if the votes will be successful or not, because they will have a whole campaign of several years technically, one and a half years, as I said, to collect signatures. But then after that it may take up to three and a half to five years to actually get to the vote. So, it allows them to have that narrative in the public debate, the public discourse. So, this is one goal. Sometimes, you don't want necessarily that it actually passes, but you want that people talk about it.

And another thing is, like I said, for example the abolition of the military service. It didn't pass at the end, it didn't get the yes. But it was such a big topic and the participation in the vote was so high. Like, there is a lot of abstentionism in Switzerland. Most people don't even vote. But in that case, it was like, over 70% of participation. So even though the No won, not the Yes, a lot of political parties and the government and everybody actually realised that it was a really hot topic and actually, people needed a change. Because it's never 99% No and 1% Yes, you still have some kind of 50:50 more or less. So in that particular case, a lot of reforms were initiated following that vote, even though the vote was unsuccessful technically.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: So, at the moment there is, I don't remember exactly, but I think it's like 14 or 15 popular initiatives that are in the signature collecting phase.

Kathrin: Right.

Yves: Right now. So, some of them of course, are arriving at the end of their 18 months. Some of them just started, like us. But you have to think that, if there are more than 10 or 20, I don't know, projects at every given time, it's a really big thing. Like, it happens in the background. Most people don't really think about it all the time. Of course, when they ask you, do you want to sign this in the street, like when you get out of the train station or like, at the market on Sunday, of course you hear about it.

And some are spending millions, literally millions for promotion. Like putting things in your mailbox and whatnot. But it is a process that is very important for Switzerland. What I wanna say is, we are not some kind of exception. It's not like some kind of a weird thing that happens once every blue moon. It's actually a thing that happens all the time. Except of course, the system is made in a way that only the successful ones will move all the way to the end. And the other ones will be eliminated slowly because they don't have enough support, they don't have enough budget, they don't have enough people. It depends, of course.

Kathrin: Yeah. But it's something that definitely is always present in Switzerland.

Yves: Yes.

Kathrin: So, let's go through the steps in some more detail. So, the first step is registering the initiative. Is that right?

Yves: So, the first step is... several things happen at the same time.

Step 1 is that you need to make sure how you want things to move forward, because there is an actual process. So, the very, very first step would be to write to Bern, to that government office where they actually deal with popular initiatives. and tell them, we are interested in doing this and that, please guide us so that we don't do, you know, things that are counterproductive or wasting everybody's time. They are very helpful because they actually want that process to be working smoothly. They're very helpful, as in, they really answer all your questions, and they actually have documentation printed in all Swiss languages, so that you can really follow the whole process.

The reason why I'm able to answer all your questions is because originally, I had absolutely no idea, and of course, I wanted that thing to move forward. But because I'm not a political party, I have no experience. And most people don't get involved in creating a popular initiative. So you have to start somewhere. And what is really nice is that the government is not against you. They're actually holding your hands, and they're telling you, like, every step of the way, what you're doing wrong or what you should be doing so that things are moving forward. So this is the first step. You get all this information, you get a few templates so that you can do things properly and you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Then no, actually the very, very first step is you have to identify what change in the constitution you wanna make. That would be the very first step. So, we were very lucky, and this is why I forget about it, because we are just adding three words to the constitution. Our changes might be the simplest and the shortest and the most straightforward amendment ever done in a popular initiative, because we're really literally adding three words. For some initiatives, they're actually adding a whole paragraph or they're adding an article. And if you are adding an article, you might have to change another article, which references something that you're changing now.

Kathrin: Of course. Yeah.

Yves: So, depending on the initiative, it becomes quite complex. So you might want to work with a constitutional lawyer or more so that they can also make sure that they write it properly, because at the end of the day, I mean, if it's successful, it'll be the Swiss constitution. It's not a small detail, right?

Kathrin: Yes.

Yves: So,j in our case, it was very simple. But even though it was simple, originally, we wanted to add two words, and the person in Bern told us it could be confusing, the way it reads, and it doesn't translate well in three or four languages. So, we suggest that you use three words, so that, you know, it's clear.

Kathrin: Okay. So what, what are the three words? You're making this very interesting.

Yves: So, the original article is Article 99, paragraph three. It says that the Swiss National Bank must make some reserves with their assets. And some of those reserves need to be kept in gold. And so we wanted to add, 'and Bitcoin'.

Kathrin: Right.

Yves: So, 'in gold and Bitcoin'. And because it doesn't translate properly and because it could lead to some kind of confusion, they said it's better if you write and in Bitcoin.

Kathrin: Oh, okay.

Yves: So, what we wanted to do was to give them as much control as possible. Them being the Swiss National Bank. We wanted that they can keep control over all the details except one detail, which is zero is not acceptable. They cannot have no Bitcoin, but the same way in gold, it doesn't say a proportion, it doesn't say an amount. They could have one little ingot of one gram if they wanted, or they could have, a hundred percent of their reserves in gold. But we want to trust them to do their job properly. So we wanted to do the same thing with Bitcoin. We wanted to say, you can have one Swiss franc worth of Bitcoin if you want. You can have the same amount as gold in Bitcoin. You can have 50% of whatever you have of gold at any given time. It's your choice. And we don't tell you what to do, and you don't have to justify your choices because you're the Swiss National Bank and you're doing a good, great job and everything is working fine.

The only thing is, we are saying, it is not acceptable that you have zero Bitcoin because it is something that you need to start getting involved now. And waiting and dismissing it is not an option. And the same way gold is in the constitution, even though gold, some people might argue, yeah, but who cares about gold? It is something that Central banks and the Swiss National Bank historically has been holding quite a lot of, so we are saying, Bitcoin is like digital gold, quote unquote, for the future. So, it is important that you have some.

But going back to what we were saying, even with something so simple, with so little detail that we just wanted to add two words, they advised us, of course we can do whatever we want, to add a third word. But in that particular case, we actually have to rewrite Article 99, paragraph three in order to submit it. And Bern says, okay, this is, like, the text, the formatting and the wording and the three languages the way you want it. And they don't exactly validate it, but they validate that it's not against the rules. Because you could have something that they say, it's acceptable the way it is to propose it. But then, it goes all the way to 100,000 signatures. And then it is deemed unconstitutional.

Kathrin: And then you've lost all the signatures, 'cause if... yeah.

Yves: Exactly. So, you could be losing everything if you were doing something that was technically not acceptable for the constitution. In this particular case, because it's very simple, we're not too worried about something like that. But again, if you wanted to have a very complex, I don't know, something about immigration or whatever, you would want to consult with constitutional lawyers who would be able to tell you this should be worded like this, this should be worded like that.

Kathrin: Okay. That's interesting. So, a really important first step. And, as I understand it, anybody in Switzerland can initiate this process, right?

Yves: As long as you're voting in Switzerland.

Kathrin: Yes. Okay. So, anybody who's allowed to vote.

Yves: Exactly. You could be a Swiss citizen living overseas, you're allowed to do things. You could be a Swiss citizen who is 16 years old. Because you don't vote, you could not do it, for example.

So this is the first step. Then after that, of course you need to have a committee. So, the idea is, they don't want that everybody can just do whatever. And of course, it's a big job, so you don't want to be alone. So, the committee is seven people minimum. And if I'm not mistaken, because I may have forgotten, but I think it's 27 people maximum. So usually, you would want to have a sweet spot somewhere where you have enough people so that you can cover all the Swiss languages and all the geographies of Switzerland.

You're trying to also appeal to a bunch of people, so you want to make sure that you don't have only young men, and then you're completely alienating older women, for example, who would not recognise themselves in how you talk, present, anything. So, you want to try to be as representative of Switzerland as possible. In general.

Kathrin: Yeah.

Yves: So, in our case it was difficult because Bitcoin is usually, like, anything finance and technology is very often primarily represented by men, which is unfortunate, but it is what it is. But the mix of both, which is Bitcoin, finance and technology... of course, there are women, but it's very difficult.

On the other hand, you have also another problem, which, it's a little bit for later, but I'll talk about it now, is that because you're very public, your name will be published publicly, your address will be published publicly... so a lot of people don't want to be part of the committee. They want to support you, they want to help you in the background. They don't wanna be exposed.

And of course, in the case of Bitcoin, the first criticism that we have is that we want to just become rich, and we want the government and the Swiss National Bank to make us rich. That's why we're doing this. Of course, a lot of people don't want to be associated with the kind of attacks. Like, whatever your initiative, you will have people who are against it. So, it can be not very nice. So you also need to have a committee that is ready to take some heat a little bit.

Kathrin: But you did find a committee or enough members for your committee, didn't you?

Yves: So, the great thing is that you have a lot of people who are very passionate about Bitcoin in Switzerland, and you have meetups, you have groups, you have conferences, events. So, it's relatively easy to recruit people who are interested in that particular topic.

For some topics, of course, like I said, I'll go back to that example, getting rid of the military service, is the same. Because you are sure that you will find pacifists everywhere in Switzerland, who will say, this is a waste of money, and we don't want the war, and we wanna be neutral, blah, blah, blah. So, you will make sure that you can find people everywhere in the country.

But some initiatives are very urban, for example, or very rural, so it becomes a little bit more difficult. Because you want to reach out to the whole population. You want to change, you wanna have a consensus ideally, that will change the whole country. But if it's like, the countryside versus the cities, or the German side versus the French side, like it happens in, votes and elections, then your initiative won't work, or it will be more difficult.

Kathrin: Yeah. Unless you find someone of the other group to support you, then, yeah.

Yves: Of course. And that's the idea with having a political party because usually, the political parties can reach out to as many people as possible from the country.

Kathrin: That makes sense.

Yves: So of course, I got to join me nine other people. Some more involved politically, some less involved politically. Some older people, some younger people. From German side, French side, countryside, city. So, the idea was to show that Bitcoin was not just for one type of people, 'cause this is also what we worry about.

And then we submitted, as I said, the text. We submitted the title, because the initiative has a title, technically. So, we call it the Bitcoin Initiative. But we actually work quite a lot on it because it really represents our goal, what we want to be bringing to the constitution.

So, the title of our initiative, which also was a back and forth with Bern, needs to be a proper translation in three languages.

Kathrin: Oh, of course.

Yves: And at the same time, I was discussing with them, I was exchanging in French. But of course, the German needs to be perfect because this is what most people will be seeing in Switzerland.

It doesn't exist in English. It exists, but it's informal. But the title of the initiative is, ‘For a financially solid, sovereign and responsible Switzerland’.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: And between brackets, Bitcoin Initiative.

Kathrin: Right. Okay,

Yves: So, this is the official title. Because your title will also explain what your goal is. Sometimes, in our particular case, we are changing an article in the constitution, but it's not necessarily very clear what the actual goal is. In our particular case, of course, if you go to the website, you have all the explanation of why we want to be doing this. But we wanted in the title to make very clear that the point is that we want Switzerland to be financially solid, financially sovereign and financially responsible.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: And the reason why, of course, can be explained, and we can talk about it during the whole podcast, or you can go to the website and read about it. But the idea is, we don't want that the SNB becomes rich. Because this is also what some people don't understand. They're saying, yeah, but you're telling us what to invest in. But the SNB mandate is not to make profit. That's not the point. The point is, the SNB has reserves, but the point is economic stability for Switzerland. We want the economy to be stable, we want the Swiss franc to be stable. And so, what we're saying is, it goes further than that. What we want is that Switzerland is stable.

Kathrin: Mm-hmm.

Yves: So, this is also why you have to, a proper title.

Kathrin: Right, of course.

Yves: Because this is what's gonna be written and published and public, and people will be able to find it, so that you don't want that there is any misunderstanding or miscommunication on your actual goals.

Kathrin: Yes. The public perception is so important, of course.

Yves: Exactly.

Kathrin: Alright, we'll be back after a really short break.

(AD BREAK)

Kathrin: And now we're back. Alright. So, after you've taken all those initial steps, it's time to collect at least a hundred thousand signatures, or a little bit more, right? Because a few of them might be invalid, so.

Yves: Yes.

Kathrin: Who can sign?

Yves: This is the funny part. Exactly. This is the funny part. So again, everybody who can vote can sign. But when you tell people nowadays in 2025, you tell them about signature, what they think is, of course I'm going to the website, I click on the link and I click the button, submit, and I sign. But this is not how it happens.

Kathrin: No, it's a bit more complicated than that, of course.

Yves: It's the old-fashioned way. You have to sign a sheet of paper. So, everything needs to be manuscript, it needs to be written by the person who's signing. You cannot like, pre-prepare things except one little part, I'll get back to that in one second. But everything needs to be signed by the person because there has been a lot of abuses.

Kathrin: Okay. Of course.

Yves: And fraud. Where people, of course, are signing on behalf of other people or creating fake signatures, that happened. But also, you go to a place where there is a lot of old people and you pre-prepare everything and you tell them, "Yeah, just sign here".

Kathrin: Oh dear. Yeah.

Yves: So, in order to prevent that, everything needs to be written by the person. It's not foolproof, but it's one step better than not.

Kathrin: Yes, to reduce the likelihood of these issues.

Yves: Exactly.

Kathrin: And I think most important maybe for our listeners is also how Swiss expats can sign. So of course, if you're in an area, people might come up to you with sheets and you can sign directly through those. But if you're an expat, you might be anywhere in the world. How does it work for Swiss expats?

Yves: So, it works exactly the same. You can, for most initiatives and hours, you go to the website, you download the PDF, you print it, and then you just fill in the part where you have to fill in your name, date of birth, address, and signature. The only thing that will change is that at the top of a sheet, and that is something we haven't talked about, but at the top of every sheet it, says the canton and the commune and the postcode that everybody on that sheet will be registered with.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: So, if you vote in some place in some canton, you will be registered in that commune. And they know you, and they know, they can check that you are voting there.

Kathrin: Of course, yes.

Yves: So, the sheet that you sign needs to be with that reference at the top. And everybody on that sheet needs to be voting in the same postcode.

Kathrin: Yes. Okay.

Yves: So, if you are overseas, you will usually be registered at the last known residence that you were in Switzerland.

Kathrin: That's right, yes.

Yves: And/or - depending on the people - where you were born. But if you receive the voting material from the embassy every time there is a vote, it's really easy to check which commune you are registered with. And you will have the postcode, and you will have the name.

Kathrin: Okay, perfect.

Yves: And then after that, when you have that commune with which you are registered in Switzerland, you put your address, like you would put your normal residential address, which can be, you live in Brazil, you would put your residential address in Brazil, which is where you actually live. But the sheet needs to be registered with the commune where you vote.

Kathrin: Okay, so that they can double check.

Yves: Not the embassy where you live. Exactly. Because once the committee receives your sheet and all the sheets, what we do is, we send it to those communes. Every single sheet needs to be verified. And then an employee of the commune will actually verify that person votes and is registered in that place.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: And then puts a stamp on the paper and then send it back to us.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: And that goes to what you were saying, you want to have more than 100,000 signatures because some people, during the 18 months, they will move. So technically, they exist in one place, they get validated, but if there is another verification later, just to make sure that, there is like a double check, randomly, and it just happens to be that person and they say, this person was validated in one place, but technically, they don't live there anymore. So that sheet becomes invalidated. And some people actually forget, like it's 18 months. So, they sign once, and then 18 months later, they sign another time.

Kathrin: Oh. And then they're doubled up. Yeah.

Yves: So exactly. So, one is invalid. Or they sign in their old address and then they move to their new address, and they say, oh, I need to sign again. Because of course now I live in a new place. I don't know all the names of all the people who sign. It's 100,000 people so I don't validate that there is no double. And of course, both signatures were correct at the time. One of them replaced the other one.

Kathrin: And so now it's no longer valid. Yeah, exactly.

Yves: The rule of thumb is actually very, very pessimistic. They advise us to gather 120,000 signatures.

Kathrin: Okay. Just in case.

Yves: Which is quite a lot. Of course, you can try your luck and put 100 000 zero, but if you're missing one, it's really sad because of course everything goes to garbage.

Kathrin: And, so, a lot of the people who are listening might be either living in Switzerland or coming to Switzerland soon. But they might not have citizenship yet, and they might not be able to vote in Switzerland yet. Is there any way they can help out, as well, in a popular initiative?

Yves: Of course. So, the first thing I wanna say about initiatives in general, and not necessarily ours, but it also happens with ours. There are a lot of initiatives that if you could vote or if you will vote, you will vote against it. Because you actually don't support to change the constitution for it. But you still want to give your signature because you think it's an interesting and important debate to be had.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: So, a lot of people, including Bitcoiners, are saying I actually like that you are bringing that forward. I actually like that. for example, the SNB now cannot dismiss the question. And Bloomberg, Financial Times, they ask them, so what's happening with Bitcoin? And they actually have to answer it. They cannot say, oh, it's frivolous. We don't care. Now, it actually is part of the political debate. But when you get your 100,000 signatures and it goes to the vote, I will vote no. But I will still give you my signature for now.

Kathrin: Okay. Interesting.

Yves: So, this is one thing. What is really important is that a lot of people are saying, I don't vote because what is one vote gonna change? It's one more, one less, it doesn't matter. In this particular case, a signature makes a huge difference.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: Because it's not like a 50:50 kind of thing. It's not, if nobody signs anyway, if you have, five signatures it goes through anyway. If you don't have the 100,000 signatures, the process is finished.

Kathrin: Yeah.

Yves: So a lot of people would support that and, of course, it's something that needs to be explained to a lot of people because a lot of people think that if you sign, it's like a defacto, you're supporting it, and you will vote yes. But in reality, you vote whatever you want.

First, we can't verify what you vote. But also, there are so many initiatives, it's not like there is a list of everybody who presented or supported something. A lot of people say, "I support that. I believe in what you're saying, but I don't necessarily agree with you".

So a lot of non-Swiss people could be helping also because they just want to help. They move to Switzerland, they like that Switzerland works nicely and has direct democracy, and they just wanna support. So, what they can do, which is really easy, is to print those sheets and to give it to their Swiss national friends or family members or colleagues, and tell them, I like this project and I think you should support it. I can't support it, I can't sign, but I can help spread the word.

So non-Swiss citizens can be supporting us, just because they believe that the project is useful in general. And they can print as many sheets as they want, and they can distribute them to their workplace or friend, friends', homes, friends' gathering. Just because a lot of Swiss people would be signing thanks to them, it's still a great support.

Kathrin: Yes. And of course, then if it takes three or more years for it to get to a vote stage, by that time they might have citizenship. You never know.

Yves: Exactly. Exactly. And it's the same thing, of course, with Bitcoin. The narrative resonates with young people who are not technically voting yet.

Kathrin: Oh, yes.

Yves: But they're telling us, we're downloading the PDF and making our parents sign.

Kathrin: Oh nice. Yeah.

Yves: We can throw a tantrum at home, and we can destroy everything, and we can blackmail our parents. So, we'll make sure that they sign because this is the first step.

Kathrin: Okay.

Yves: But because I'm 17 or 16, by the time the vote will come, I'll be registered. I can vote.

Kathrin: Absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense as well.

And so, let's assume you get the right amount of signatures and then they get verified, as you said, by the communes or the municipalities of each area, right?

Yves: Yeah.

Kathrin: And then if there are enough, after the verification, after the invalid ones have been deducted, they get delivered to Bern, yes?

Yves: Yes. So, you make an appointment, you bring all those boxes with all those sheets in the back of your car, and you bring them to Bern, and someone will be getting them.

I haven't done it yet, so I'm not sure if they give you like a little coupon or like a little signature or something. I hope that they do, so that we have the federal stamp, and it's cool.

Kathrin: Yeah. That would be nice.

Yves: And someone with white gloves takes those boxes inside, and then that's the moment when they start first checking that you actually have a proper amount of people and that everybody's a Swiss voter and everything, that there is no fraud, that the number is correct, that the people are correct, that everything has been stamped by the communes properly, any papers that you didn't spend the time to get validated properly. And then after that, of course it goes to the Parliament. First, the whole thing is in a queue but then eventually gets to Parliament, and of course the Swiss government will be evaluating it.

Kathrin: Yep.

Yves: And deciding if they support it or not.

Kathrin: And then if, maybe, they want to make a counter-proposal as well.

Yves: Exactly. And this is the moment when it becomes really interesting. Because up until now, the SNB was not allowed to dismiss the topic anymore. But now it becomes the political parties who cannot say we don't care, because they actually have to say if they support it or not. It doesn't really look good if you say, we don't support it because we don't understand what it's about.

Kathrin: Of course. So they have to also learn more about it potentially, and...

Yves: Exactly.

Kathrin: That's part of the purpose, isn't it? To get people engaged, to get people talking, to increase maybe the proportion of people who have a working knowledge of what it is.

Yves: Exactly. At least, as you said, a working knowledge. They don't have to become expert. But the whole idea of having politicians, they don't need to be perfect in every area, but they should be at least understanding what's at stake.

And what's at stake in this particular case on a global scale is pretty big, as we saw with the US and everything which is now discussing about it. There was Czech Republic in Europe that was also discussing about it. You have big companies that are starting to have some of their treasuries in Bitcoin. So it becomes a natural topic, and it cannot be just dismissed because it's frivolous and just for geeks...

Kathrin: Of course. Okay. And then eventually it goes to public vote?

Yves: Yes.

Kathrin: And that's the last stage, isn't it? Then there's the deciding factor if Yes or No.

Yves: Exactly.. And that's the moment when... Usually, if you're lucky, you don't have to spend a lot of money. You still need to spend some, either money or effort, to gather the signatures, because you need to print stuff, you need to go in the streets, you need to make a lot of public communication, social network, whatever. And some initiatives, they're spending a lot of money. They're raising money and they're spending money to distribute in your mailbox, to hire companies who are sending students in the streets to gather as many signatures as possible. So all this has a cost, but you can go around it if you're working and if you're spending time and you have people supporting you. However, when it becomes the vote, suddenly you have to convince the whole population of the country.

Kathrin: Yes. It's a much bigger issue.

Yves: And that's the moment when the opponents will spend a lot of money making campaigns, and billboards, and online ads, and television ads, and stickers and flags to destroy your narrative. So usually, that's the moment when you want to raise as much money as possible and as much support as possible to make sure that your narrative has a chance.

Kathrin: Yes. It's also heard. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. Yeah, it's a really interesting process, isn't it? And most other countries I think don't have it in the same form. So, thank you for talking to us about it today. If listeners now are getting engaged and would like to learn more, where can they find out about Bitcoin initiative?

Yves: So of course, in the show notes, I'm sure you will put a link.

Kathrin: Of course.

Yves: If you look for a Bitcoin initiative, we should be up there in the first one or two results on search engines. But otherwise, it's initiativebtc. BTC like Bitcoin, all in one word, .ch.

Kathrin: Okay.  

Yves: And of course, we're on social networks and LinkedIn, and whatnot. If you look for us, you can find a website in two seconds, and if not, you go in the show notes and you click the link.

Kathrin: Okay, amazing. Is there anything else people should know about the initiative or in general?

Yves: I think they should re-listen to the whole episode one more time, to make sure that they understood all the details, but no. In general, without jokes, the thing is, as I said earlier, every signature counts. So if people want to support us, one signature makes a huge difference. If people are Swiss or non-Swiss, they can have their friends and family and colleagues and whatever support us as well. It takes a signature and it's non-binding, so nobody really cares what you actually think about Bitcoin.

If you want to learn more and understand more, what we're gonna be doing now that the weather is a little bit nicer is, we're gonna be touring Switzerland to have little events so that we can answer questions and meet people and explain what we are trying to do, so that there is no misunderstanding.

We have a few meetups that are planned because they're Bitcoin meetups. But of course, non-Bitcoiners are welcome to join, but we want to also make mini events. They're not like conferences, but like, mini gatherings for people who are not Bitcoiners who want to understand more. Because again, it's not an initiative for Bitcoiners, it's an initiative for everybody in Switzerland, and we're not taking it lightly that we want to change the constitution.

We're not saying it's just for us. If it was just for us, then we wouldn't disturb everybody. We would just do it for ourselves, and that's enough. But in this particular case, we want to change how Switzerland and the Swiss National Bank work slightly. So, we understand that it affects everybody in Switzerland, and so we want to make sure that everybody understands what we're doing because we're doing it for Switzerland in general and the Swiss economy in general.

Kathrin: Presumably this will be listed also on the website, if there are any upcoming events.

Yves: So, on the website, on social networks. And we haven't really started sending a newsletter, but, because there was no event or anything like that yet. But you can register, there is like a little form, and you can put your email address. And so, if you register, then of course we will send you a newsletter whenever we're doing things.

Kathrin: Okay. Fantastic.

Alright, that's it.

Yves: And of course, we welcome any question and criticism. Because we know that there is a lot of questions and criticism. But what we ask is that people are open-minded and that they want to learn because there is a lot to be shared and to be understood.

Yeah, in general, a lot of people have questions, and we do our best to answer all of them.

Kathrin: Fantastic.

Yeah. So thanks once again to our guest, Yves, for joining us.

Yves: Thank you for asking me all those questions because that's part of what I just discussed about, obviously.

I want also people to understand that doing that initiative is a fantastic thing. It's incredible. We take it for granted, but when you travel around the world and you talk to people, you realise that in Switzerland we are extremely lucky to have that system, and it doesn't work always the way we want. But the fact that it comes from the people... Some people are saying, yeah, but I don't like that it comes from the top to the bottom. But in reality, at the top is the people. It's the citizens.

Kathrin: Yes. You get to really decide and make a difference. Yeah.

Yves: Exactly. We have the opportunity to make a difference. After that, it's do you want to or not?

Kathrin: It's up to everybody else. Yes.

Yves: Exactly.

Kathrin: Right.

And thanks to you for listening. We'll include links in the show notes to our guest and to further materials about some of the topics that we've spoken about today. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review on your favourite podcast platform.

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