The largest US banks are shifting their focus from monitoring crypto to operational planning and selective rollouts.
Over half of the 25 largest US banks are now weighing or rolling out crypto-related products.
An Aug. 8 status chart shared by River that tracks the giants across two lanes, custody and trading.
The snapshot shows multiple firms moving from “not yet” to “exploring,” “announced,” or restricted access for high-net-worth clients, indicating that digital asset offerings are steadily entering mainstream wealth and capital-markets pipelines.
Concrete moves since early 2024 help explain the shift. Morgan Stanley considered letting its 15,000 brokers recommend spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to clients, working on guardrails for suitability and allocations, a sign of expanding distribution beyond unsolicited orders.
More recently, Charles Schwab’s chief executive said that the brokerage plans to add Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for customers, citing strong demand to view all holdings on a single platform.
PNC went further on the banking side, selecting Coinbase so that wealth and asset management customers can trade crypto directly through their PNC accounts rather than a separate venue.
Custody and tokenization are advancing in parallel. State Street signaled plans to launch a stablecoin and tokenized deposits to improve settlement, followed by efforts to tokenize bonds and money market shares.
BNY Mellon has been surfacing repeatedly in filings and product builds, including administrator and cash-custodian roles in ETF documents. Additionally, the bank appeared as custodian for reserves tied to Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin more recently.
