Two financial institutions, each managing more than $1 trillion in client assets, approved crypto product access this summer while Bitcoin sits at $63,013 and the Fear & Greed Index reads 34. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley confirmed the approvals but declined to name the firms, describe what the products cover, or say when clients can actually access them.
"This summer two financial institutions that manage over a trillion dollars of investor savings and wealth looked at this space in a bear market and said, we want to make this available to our clients," Horsley said. The contrast he drew is direct: institutions of that size did not open crypto access during the 2022 downturn, even as prices collapsed and retail held.
"This year everyone just put on the crypto jersey," Horsley said. "Everyone works for crypto now." That framing captures how completely the institutional posture has reversed—not incrementally, but as a wholesale change in which side of the table major finance sits on.
Sygnum Chief Investment Officer Fabian Dori put the shift in blunter terms. "The old 'long bitcoin, short the bankers' trade is over: banks have moved from resisting digital assets to building and enabling or distributing them through custody, tokenization and regulated trading," Dori said. He attributed the change to client demand and clearer regulation, and called it structural rather than cyclical—meaning it does not reverse when prices fall.
Dori also drew a line between what has changed and what has not. "What has not changed is the market's character," he said. "Institutionalization has added a layer of infrastructure on top of crypto's reflexive, narrative-driven trading rather than replacing it." The pipes are better; the volatility dynamic is not gone.
Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley described where that infrastructure build is heading. Large financial firms are choosing to partner with specialist providers rather than build custody and trading infrastructure themselves, he said. "We're quickly headed towards a world where there isn't 'traditional finance' and 'decentralized finance.' There's just 'finance,'" McCauley said. Anchorage has seen its client roster reflect the convergence of traditional and decentralized finance over the past two years, with real-world assets moving on-chain and large asset managers creating crypto wrappers.
The timeline of bank entry into crypto runs back further than the current cycle. Swissquote added bitcoin trading in 2017. DBS followed in 2020 and BBVA in 2021. BNY Mellon launched institutional crypto custody in 2022—the same year Nubank added bitcoin and ether trading and LGT introduced crypto services. St. Galler Kantonalbank and Santander entered in 2023. Zürcher Kantonalbank added retail crypto trading in 2024, the same year Standard Chartered, Charles Schwab, SoFi and Morgan Stanley moved into the space.
What this summer's approvals add to that timeline is scale and timing. A firm crossing the $1 trillion threshold in assets under management is not a regional bank or a fintech—it is a systemically significant institution with compliance, legal and reputational constraints that smaller entrants do not face. Two of them acted during a bear market rather than waiting for price momentum, which changes the read on what is driving adoption.
Horsley's framing—that these firms are not debating whether the asset class should exist—is the material shift from 2022. Three years ago the conversation at major institutions was whether crypto belonged in client portfolios at all. The approvals this summer answer that question operationally, even if the product details and launch dates remain undisclosed.
The broader buildout is running on partnerships rather than proprietary stacks. Large financial firms are relying on specialist infrastructure providers for custody and trading rather than constructing those systems in-house. That model keeps the major institutions out of the technology risk while capturing the distribution opportunity—clients get access, specialists build the rails.
Dori's structural-versus-cyclical argument carries weight given the bank entry data. Each of the institutions that entered between 2017 and 2024 did so at different points in the market cycle—bull and bear alike. None of them reversed course after entry. The pattern suggests institutional crypto adoption does not track price the way retail flows do.
What remains open is the detail behind this summer's approvals. Bitwise confirmed the institutions and the scale but provided nothing on product type, whether the access covers spot holdings, custody-only arrangements, tokenized funds or something else, or when clients will actually be able to trade.
