Bitwise Ranks BNY, JPMorgan Top for Bank Crypto Exposure

Bitwise Asset Management has published a ranking of traditional banks with the widest-ranging cryptocurrency exposure, and the institutions at the top are not fintech disruptors but the incumbent heavyweights of global finance. BNY Mellon and JPMorgan Chase lead the field across four categories: trading, payments, exchange-traded products, and tokenization.

The ranking, published 9 May, also names Citi, DBS, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, and UBS as having broad exposure to digital assets across multiple business lines. Together the seven banks represent more than $100 trillion in combined assets. Bitwise, which oversees more than $15 billion in client assets, produced the ranking to measure how far traditional finance has moved into crypto infrastructure since US spot Bitcoin ETF approvals reshaped the market in early 2024.

BNY Mellon, the world’s largest custodian with roughly $59 trillion in assets under custody and administration, has moved furthest. On 7 May the bank announced it would launch Bitcoin custody services in Abu Dhabi through partnerships with Finstreet and ADI Foundation. The digital-asset strategy began in February 2024 when the bank said it would hold, transfer, and issue digital currencies based on client demand. BNY had already been laying groundwork: it received approval from New York’s financial regulator in 2023 to custody digital assets, becoming one of the first major US banks to get the green light. The Abu Dhabi operation will initially cover Bitcoin and Ethereum custody, with plans for stablecoins and tokenized assets later.

The largest piece of BNY’s crypto business is its role servicing the iShares Bitcoin ETP, ticker IB1T. That product reached approximately $100 billion in assets under management during the fourth quarter of 2025, making it the fastest-growing exchange-traded product on record. Custodial fees on a $100 billion vehicle translate into material recurring revenue for BNY’s securities-services division, and the bank is now positioned to capture similar mandates as more crypto ETPs come to market.

JPMorgan Chase took a different route. The bank built blockchain infrastructure through its Onyx division and runs one of the most active institutional trading desks for crypto-adjacent products on Wall Street. It has also pursued tokenization of traditional assets, including US Treasury securities and money-market fund shares. Where BNY leans on custody, JPMorgan treats blockchain as a new settlement rail, the same plumbing it provides for equities and fixed income, applied to digital assets. That sets it apart from the pure-custody models that dominate the crypto-native sector. In practice, Onyx has processed over $900 billion in repo transactions on its blockchain network since 2022, giving JPMorgan operational data that most crypto-native firms lack.

The rest of the list

Bitwise’s ranking names five more banks. Their approaches vary. Citi has a blockchain platform for tokenized securities, built inside its markets business. DBS moved early. The Singapore bank opened DBS Digital Exchange in 2020 for institutional crypto trading and later added tokenized bonds and structured products. Deutsche Bank got a BaFin licence for custody work. Its trading desk buildout is still in progress. Societe Generale went the stablecoin route, issuing EUR CoinVertible on a public blockchain via its SG-Forge subsidiary. UBS tested tokenized fund shares on Ethereum.

What changed

Spot Bitcoin ETFs went live in the US in January 2024. For a decade, large banks had treated crypto as noise. Then their biggest clients started asking for custody. By end-2025, spot Bitcoin ETFs held over $120 billion. The ETF market grew beyond Bitcoin. Ethereum funds, multi-asset index products, and staking-yield ETPs all launched. Each one buys the same custody, transfer-agent, and fund-admin services banks already sell to traditional asset managers. BlackRock’s IB1T alone, at $100 billion, is now one of the largest ETFs of any kind, not just in crypto.

Regulatory geography shaped where banks placed their bets. BNY went to Abu Dhabi because the UAE wrote clear rules early. Its Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority has licensed a running list of exchanges and custodians, creating a legal framework that lets banks operate without the ambiguity they face in Washington or Brussels. DBS got its head start in Singapore for the same reason. Banks in places with settled frameworks built. Banks in places without them waited.

What the ranking leaves open

The list also highlights an untested risk. Every bank Bitwise named is systemically important. A crypto selloff bad enough to hurt their custody or ETP revenue would not stop at crypto-native firms. The FSB has pointed at these linkages. It has not yet run a scenario on them.

For investors, the same integration brings real protections. Client assets sit segregated. Custody is audited. Balance sheets back the operations. Crypto markets now move on the same rails as everything else. The open question is whether the plumbing arrived before the rules did. The Bitwise ranking, by putting names and categories to what was previously a diffuse narrative, makes that question concrete.