The authors of the study evaluated the 25 largest American banks and reported that the only one offering customers both to trade and store bitcoin is PNC Group.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest in terms of assets, is just exploring the possibility of adding digital asset trading to the list of services. Wells Fargo offers loans secured by bitcoin to corporate clients. Citigroup is exploring options for providing crypto asset storage services to corporate clients. The combined assets of these three large financial companies exceed $7.3 trillion.
River experts cited other examples of American banks working with digital assets: American Express issued a card with bonuses in BTC (BTC Rewards Card), and USAA announced integration with cryptocurrency exchanges.
However, most of the time, market participants are only testing the demand for cryptocurrency assets, limiting themselves to offers for wealthy people (HNW — High Net Worth), River reported. For example, US Bank and BNY Mellon provide bitcoin storage services only to this category of customers. Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley allow HNW clients to trade cryptocurrencies.
A number of other banks have announced the launch of trading services in the near future: Charles Schwab, State Street, HSBC (US) and UBS (US).
Ten of the 25 credit institutions analyzed do not yet provide either storage or trading services for bitcoin or even plan to do so. Among them is Bank of America, which holds the second largest assets among US banks.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of the Coinbase crypto exchange, spoke about the growing loyalty of bankers to cryptocurrencies at the World Economic Forum in Davos. According to him, most of the bank executives with whom he spoke support the development of the crypto industry and see it as a promising business opportunity.