Banks worldwide reportedly own 9.4 billion euros in crypto assets.
Investments in cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular among large companies and even states. For example, the largest crypto-investor among public companies is the American corporation MicroStrategy, and the government of El Salvador has recognized bitcoin as a legal tender and has been actively investing in the first cryptocurrency since September 2021. At the same time, major banks have also gradually started to associate their activities with crypto-assets.
It was possible to find out details of relations of some banks with cryptocurrencies thanks to activity of representatives of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. According to the data presented in the monitoring report at the end of September 2022, 19 out of 182 global banks in the scope of the Basel Committee confirmed the presence of their digital assets. The total amount invested in this asset category was the equivalent of 9.4 billion euros ($9.38 billion), representing 0.14% of the total assets of the 19 banks surveyed that hold cryptocurrencies.
Two banks accounted for more than half of the total crypto assets, and four others accounted for about 40 percent of the remaining assets. Of the 19 banks reporting cryptocurrency data, 10 were from the Americas, seven from Europe and two from the rest of the world.
Leaders among the cryptocurrencies favored by banks are Bitcoin and Ethereum, which make up more than half of the assets purchased. Polkadot DOT and Ripple XRP received another notable result among individual cryptocurrencies, ranking 3rd and 4th.
