For years, U.S. banks viewed Bitcoin as something to observe from afar.
This asset resided on specialized exchanges and trading applications, separated from core banking systems by capital regulations, custody concerns, and reputational risks.
Yet, this attitude is finally starting to change.
As per data from River, close to 60% of the nation’s 25 largest banks are now on the journey to sell, safeguard, or provide advisory services for Bitcoin directly.
While spot ETF approvals captured headlines in 2024, the narrative for 2025 is more subdued: cryptocurrencies are transitioning from fringe investments to integrated items within conventional wealth and custody management.
Should current projections hold, 2026 may be the first year Bitcoin is perceived as a standard product rather than an anomaly.
From ETF Pass-throughs to White-label Trading
The ETF framework marked the first phase of institutional Bitcoin adoption, allowing banks to respond to client demands within a familiar structure, with asset managers and specialized custodians managing most operational tasks.
Importantly, ETF trading also provided a real-time stress test for these institutions, demonstrating that trading flows could navigate upwards and downwards without disrupting market infrastructure.
For risk committees, the conclusion is that Bitcoin’s volatility can fit within existing supervisory frameworks, even if it remains highly volatile.
The next phase involves allowing some clients to hold and trade the actual asset using the same interfaces they utilize for their other investments.
PNC Financial Services Group’s private banking initiative serves as a prime example. Instead of developing a crypto exchange, PNC is leveraging Coinbase’s “Crypto-as-a-Service” platform.
PNC manages client relations, suitability assessments, and reporting while Coinbase handles trading and key management behind the scenes.
Variations of this “white-label” model are emerging as the industry’s compromise, enabling banks to meet client demands without establishing their own wallet infrastructures or blockchain operations.
Moreover, recent guidance from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has clarified how national banks can regard crypto trades as riskless principal transactions, wherein a bank buys from a liquidity provider and sells to a client almost instantaneously.
This approach minimizes the capital burden from market risks and facilitates placing Bitcoin desks alongside foreign exchange or fixed income operations.
Despite this advancement, a cautious stance prevails. Banks are commencing with their most sophisticated clients and limited product offerings.
For context, Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley are eyeing the first half of 2026 for spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading on self-directed platforms.
However, access is expected to be moderated with strict allocation caps, conservative margin rules, and stringent eligibility requirements.
A Regulatory Framework
This transformation is supported by a regulatory and charter environment that increasingly accommodates traditional institutions more seamlessly than their newer competitors.
The GENIUS Act has laid down a federal framework for stablecoin issuers, while the OCC has granted conditional national trust charters to crypto firms, creating a class of regulated entities that can operate within existing risk and capital regimes.
This combination enables banks to piece together plug-and-play solutions. US Bancorp has restarted its institutional Bitcoin custody service using NYDIG as a sub-custodian.
Other major incumbents, such as BNY Mellon, are developing digital asset platforms aimed at institutions that prefer their Bitcoin held by the same trusted brands safeguarding Treasuries and mutual funds.
For affluent clients, presentation matters. Acquiring Bitcoin through a Morgan Stanley or Schwab interface, with positions appearing in the same dashboards and statements as other assets, feels fundamentally different from wiring funds to an offshore venue.
Thus, banks are leveraging that trust and regulatory credibility to reframe crypto exchanges and infrastructure providers as backend utilities rather than frontend brands.
Consequently, the timeline for normalization is expedited but not instantaneous.
Bank of America intends to enable advisors across Merrill, the private bank, and Merrill Edge to recommend crypto exchange-traded products starting January 2026.
This would transition Bitcoin from being “unsolicited” access to assets that integrate into model portfolios, granting them exposure to the same allocation machinery that routes flows into equity and bond ETFs.
New Infrastructure, New Risks
The same systems that expedite banks’ movements also introduce new vulnerabilities.
Most institutions offering or contemplating crypto access are not establishing their own vaults, instead relying on a limited number of infrastructure providers, such as Coinbase, NYDIG, and Fireblocks, for execution, wallet technology, and key security.
This concentration presents a different form of systemic risk. The riskless principal model and ETF wrappers limit the level of outright market risk banks must carry on their balance sheets.
However, they do not eliminate counterparty and operational risks.
Thus, a significant outage, cyber incident, or enforcement action involving a core sub-custodian could affect not only retail crypto traders but also impact private banking divisions, institutional custody functions, and model portfolios across multiple large institutions at once.
Given this reality, banks are literally tying their reputations and service levels to the resilience of vendors that were absent a decade ago.
Risk management teams can attempt to mitigate this by insisting on modularity to allow for vendor changes and by keeping initial programs small relative to total assets.
However, the trajectory is clear: a growing share of Bitcoin exposure will rest at the intersection of large banks’ wealth platforms and a concentrated group of crypto specialists.
From Pilot to Standard Offering
Despite lingering risks, integration is progressing.
US Bancorp’s custody revival, PNC’s private banking trading, Schwab and Morgan Stanley’s 2026 ambitions, Bank of America’s advisory approval, and JPMorgan’s acceptance of crypto all point to a unified outcome: Bitcoin is becoming an integral part of mainstream finance rather than existing outside of it.
None of this guarantees a frictionless transition, given that BTC price volatility persists, policies can shift, and a serious incident in crypto infrastructure could hinder or reverse aspects of this roadmap.
However, if the current trajectory continues, by 2026, the question for many wealth clients will shift from whether their bank offers Bitcoin to how their exposure is divided among ETFs, direct holdings, and advisory models. It will also be about which institution they trust to connect them with the underlying infrastructure.
Banks might not have selected Bitcoin as their preferred innovation project. They are now adapting to it because their clients already have.
The current pivot is focused on constructing sufficient machinery around the asset to prevent those clients and their balances from permanently relocating elsewhere.
