At the end of 2022, clients of banks had cryptocurrency positions of roughly €91 billion ($96bn), according to the Basel Committee. Yesterday it released data for bank capital ratios for the second half of 2022. However, bank direct exposures to crypto-assets and digital asset custody dropped significantly and were already tiny. A combination of the Basel crypto rules and regulatory frictions are having an impact.
The $96 billion was the figure for ‘other exposures’ under the Basel rules, which mainly includes positions on behalf of clients. Seven banks in the Americas made up the whole amount. No other banks globally reported on this category. Prior periods show zero ‘other exposures’, implying banks have radically increased their client activity.
It’s hard to compare across periods because the banks included in the figures may not be the same. And gathering data on the topic is still in its infancy. That said, we only compared June 2022 with December 2022 and the number of reporting banks in each region was the same.
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