Basel Committee: Banks Worldwide Hold €9.4 Billion in Crypto Assets

The study revealed that banks mainly held volatile cryptocurrencies and had little exposure to stablecoins.

According to a new study released by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a supranational organization responsible for setting standards for bank capital, liquidity and funding, 19 of the 182 global banks supervised by the committee have declared to hold digital assets. Together, their total crypto exposure is estimated at €9.4 billion ($9.38 billion).

In context, this represents 0.14% of the total risk-weighted asset mix of the 19 cryptocurrency-owning banks surveyed. Taken together, cryptocurrencies represent only about 0.01% of the total risk-weighted assets of all 182 banks under the supervision of the Basel Committee. Two banks accounted for more than half of overall crypto-asset exposures, while four others accounted for around 40% of the remaining exposures. Of the 19 banks that submitted crypto data, 10 were from the Americas, seven from Europe, and two from the rest of the world.

Reported digital exposures were primarily comprised of Bitcoin (BTC) (31%), Ether (ETH) (22%) and derivatives related to Bitcoin or Ether (35%). Other notable mentions include Polkadot's DOT (2%), XRP (2%), Cardano's ADA (1%), Solana's SOL (1%), Litecoin (LTC) (0. 4%) and Stellar Lumen (XLM) (0.4%). Of the digital assets held by banks, 50.2% were for custody, wallet or insurance performance. A further 45.7% was held for clearing and market making purposes. Finally, an estimated 4.2% of cryptocurrencies in this category were used for borrowing and lending.

The Basel Committee...