Basel crypto stats: banks shift away from Bitcoin as Ether, stablecoins gain ground

Today the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) released its latest statistics, including details about banking crypto asset activities for the second half of 2025. While previous reports have shown marked changes between periods, the crypto report for this half was steadier, with reasonable growth in custody and a significant increase in client activities, but not in prudential exposures. The most notable takeaway was big changes in the makeup of prudential exposures, with a shift away from Bitcoin in the Americas, and a shift towards stablecoins in the Rest of World category.

The standout growth was in activities on behalf of clients, with the Americas increasing activity by 93% to €6.4 billion whereas European figures fell 25% to €1.9 billion. The statistics can be rather variable across time frames because a different set of banks reports during each period.

Prudential exposures of banks were more or less flat compared to the first half of 2025, with the Americas and Europe pretty static for the last 18 months. This may represent an upper limit on banks’ appetite for crypto exposures given the capital requirements under the current Basel rules.

The most notable aspect of the prudential exposures was the change in makeup since the previous period, especially for the Americas. Bitcoin’s proportion of exposures fell from 75.8% to 44.2% with the major beneficiary being Ether, which increased its share to 38.5%. But banks also invested in other cryptocurrencies such as Solana (7.8%) and XRP (5.6%).

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