ECB: About One in Three Directly Supervised Euro Area Banks Is Active in Crypto

About one in three banks directly supervised by the European Central Bank is involved in crypto-asset activities, according to an ECB overview prepared for the Eurogroup and published on November 9.

The ECB supervises the euro area’s largest and most significant banks directly, while smaller lenders mostly fall under national supervisors. It does not name individual banks or say what service each one offers. The wording “crypto-asset activities” is broad and can cover trading, custody or other services.

The document also does not say how many banks hold bitcoin or other coins themselves, how many offer crypto trading to retail clients, or which activity is most common. The figure therefore does not mean that a third of all bank customers can buy crypto through their bank. It does show that digital assets and the technology behind them are becoming part of ordinary banking operations.

The ECB also notes that some banks are exploring tokenized deposits, which stay a claim on a bank but can move over a digital network. In the Netherlands, ING, ABN AMRO and Rabobank back a planned euro stablecoin from Qivalis, a project separate from the ECB’s digital euro.

The supervisor pairs the trend with a warning. Banks outsource much digital work to outside technology firms, so one outage or attack at a provider can hit several institutions at once, and AI makes it faster and cheaper to find weak spots in computer systems.

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Sources:

• Crypto Insiders: 1 op 3 grote Europese banken doet iets met crypto