Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's biggest banking group with $1.1 trillion in assets, nearly doubled its cryptocurrency stash in the first quarter of 2026. The bank increased holdings from roughly $100 million at the end of 2025 to $235 million by March 31. The move marks a notable bet on XRP — the bank's first major exposure to the token — and a continued appetite for Bitcoin and Ethereum through regulated investment vehicles.
Where the bank put its money
The most eye-catching addition is XRP. Intesa Sanpaolo now holds 712,319 shares of the Grayscale XRP Trust, worth about $18 million as of March 31. That's its first significant institutional XRP position, and the bank went through a trust rather than buying tokens directly on exchanges. It also piled into Bitcoin via the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF and the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, and added Ethereum exposure through the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust.
A preference for regulated products
The bank didn't buy any crypto on spot exchanges. Every new position came through ETFs or trusts — a deliberate choice that signals a preference for products with regulatory wrappers. That's consistent with how large, conservative institutions tend to approach crypto: they want the exposure without the custody headache or direct market risk. Given Intesa Sanpaolo's size and client base, a direct purchase of tokens would have raised eyebrows. The trust and ETF route keeps things clean.
The Solana pullback
Not every asset got the green light. Solana holdings in the bank's portfolio cratered. Shares of the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF dropped from over 266,000 in December 2025 to just 2,817 by March 2026. That's a near-total exit — a strategic reduction, not a trim. No reason was given in the filing, but the timing coincides with increased volatility in Solana's network and questions about its staking yield. The bank clearly decided to rotate capital elsewhere.
The overall crypto allocation still represents a fraction of Intesa Sanpaolo's trillion-dollar balance sheet. But the pace of accumulation is accelerating: the portfolio more than doubled in three months. The bank's next quarterly filing, due in August, will show whether this trend holds — or if the Solana cut was just the start of a broader rebalancing.
