New research published by an international committee formed to develop banking regulation standards is offering some insights on the exposure of banks to crypto assets.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision sought to analyze the exposure of banks to crypto as part of its analytical, supervisory and policy initiatives related to the nascent asset class.
Using data submitted by 19 banks, 10 of which are from the Americas, seven from Europe and two from elsewhere, the research found that the average crypto asset exposure of banks is about $9.24 billion.
The report notes that the exposure is distributed unevenly, however, with just two banks making up over half of the crypto exposure and four making up less than 40%.
The data also showed which digital assets banks have the most exposure to. Bitcoin (BTC) tops the list, followed by Ethereum (ETH).
“Reported crypto asset exposures are primarily composed of Bitcoin (31%), Ether (22%) and a multitude of instruments with either Bitcoin or Ether as the underlying crypto assets (25% and 10% respectively). Together, these make up almost 90% of reported exposures.”
The study shows that banks also have significant exposure to Polkadot (DOT), Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC) and Stellar (XLM) as well as smaller exposure to the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) and other tokenized assets.
The banks’ exposure to crypto spans through three broad categories, namely crypto holdings and lending, clearing and market-making services and custody/wallet/insurance services.
“Custody/wallet/insurance and other services make up half of the reported crypto exposures, with the rest largely made up of clearing and market making services (46%) and the remaining 4% due to crypto holdings and lending.”
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