Intesa Sanpaolo, the Italy’s biggest bank has made its first proprietary Bitcoin purchase, buying roughly 1 million euros ($1 million) worth of the cryptocurrency.
The lender bought 11 Bitcoin on Monday, the bank’s digital asset trading and investments head Niccolò Bardoscia said in an internal email that was posted on online forum 4chan.
The move comes as large financial companies are expanding into crypto and the various market.
“It’s very small amounts, considering we have 100 billion euros in our securities portfolio,” Intesa Chief Executive Officer Carlo Messina said on Tuesday.
“It’s an experiment, a test,” he added.
In 2023, the bank had set up a proprietary crypto trading desk within the corporate and investment banking division.
Last month, the European Union (EU) fully adopted its first crypto regulations.
While Intesa is currently only prop trading — buying and selling using its own balance sheet rather than on behalf of clients — the crypto desk’s activities fit with the bank’s broader blockchain projects, and it may be a stepping stone for eventually trading digital assets for institutional customers.
“We won’t become a Bitcoin provider but we need to know how to do so if our bigger clients ask us to,” Messina also said.
“As a wealth management company that has the ambition to become like (Swiss rival) UBS, we have very sophisticated clients that may ask for this kind of investment and you can’t serve them unless you have a presence (in the market),” he added.
“We tested how to handle any potential requests from clients, but there will anyway be very tight limits and clients will need to prove they understand potential risks,” Messina further said.
Bitcoin more than doubled in value in 2024, driven by the US market regulator’s approval for exchange-traded funds tied to its spot price, and optimism over easing regulatory hurdles under incoming US President Donald Trump.
