As revealed via a new research from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, 19 out of 182 banks worldwide under supervision of the committee reported having possession of crypto assets. 

Specifically, per data from the Committee – a supranational organization responsible for setting the standards on bank capital, liquidity and funding – the combined exposure to crypto is estimated to be 9.4 billion euros ($9.38 billion). 

This is reportedly a representative of 0.14% of the overall risk-weighted asset composition of the 19 crypto-owning banks surveyed. When taken into account the total figure, crypto only made up approximately 0.01% of the total risk-weighted assets of all 182 banks under the Basel Committee’s supervision. 

Two banks took up over fifty percent of the overall proportion of crypto-asset exposures, while four more made up around 40% of the remaining exposures. 

Out of the 19 banks that submitted crypto data, 10 situated in the Americas, seven were from Europe and two were from the rest of the world.

Reported digital exposures primarily consisted of Bitcoin (31%), Ether  (22%), and Bitcoin or Ether-related derivates (35%), along with Polkadot (2%), Cardano (1%), Solana (1%), Litecoin (0.4%) and Stellar Lumen (XLM) (0.4%). 

Of digital assets in the possession of banks, 50.2% were dedicated to custody, wallet or insurance performance. Another 45.7% were held for clearing and market-making. Finally, an estimated 4.2% of cryptocurrency in this category was used for borrowing and lending.

The Basel Committee further claimed that the insights should be “interpreted with a degree of caution”, because of the difficulty of ascertaining whether some banks have under- or over-reported their exposures to crypto assets. 

In the past, the Basel Committee has reportedly suggested that banks put a limitation to their exposure to volatile cryptocurrencies to just 1% of their Tier 1 Capital with a 1,250% risk premium.