The largest Italian bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, joined the ranks of institutional crypto investors, with its first Bitcoin purchase worth about 1 million EUR.
According to the Reuters report, Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank by assets, has recently completed its inaugural proprietary bitcoin trade, acquiring 11 bitcoins for approximately €1 million ($1.03 million).
Although it wasn’t officially announced, Reuters accessed an internal bank’s message where the company’s CEO Carlo Messina said, “As of today, Jan. 13, 2025, Intesa Sanpaolo owns 11 bitcoins”.
As of today, Bitcoin trades at $97K per token, having experienced a bullish ride last year, driven by the U.S. markets regulator’s approval of exchange-traded funds tied to its spot price and optimism over easing regulatory hurdles under incoming U.S. President Donald Trump. After peaking at over $106K, the pioneer cryptocurrency moderated a little but started growing in price again this week.
So far, Intesa’s investment is just an experiment to test the crypto waters and diversify the financial giant’s portfolio. Besides, the company serving numerous high-net-worth clients who may be interested in cryptocurrencies needs a crypto market presence to satisfy its customers’ needs. At the same time, the bank has no intention of becoming a major “Bitcoin player”.
Reportedly, the bank established a proprietary trading desk for digital assets back in 2023 and began handling spot cryptocurrency trades the following year.
At present, Intesa Sanpaolo has a market capitalisation of about $73 billion and is one of the top 250 world’s most valuable companies. Although the bank is present in a few dozen countries, Italy remains its main market in terms of financial performance. For a while, Intesa Sanpaolo has been the leader in its domestic market in all business areas (retail, corporate, and wealth management).
A few months ago, the company also partnered with BlackRock to expand its digital wealth management services to clients in Belgium and Luxembourg. Being the world’s biggest asset manager and the leading shareholder of Intesa Sanpaolo, BlackRock is one of the biggest institutional supporters of Bitcoin and crypto, facilitating cryptocurrency investments in both the U.S. and Canada with spot ETFs.
