Italy’s biggest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, has made history by becoming the first Italian financial institution to buy 11 bitcoins for a "test" purchase worth $1 million.
Initially a widespread rumor, Bloomberg has confirmed that Italy’s largest banking giant has indeed dipped its toes in Bitcoin. According to an internal memo, the financial institution completed its first proprietary Bitcoin trade, investing the funds into the world’s largest digital currency.
“It’s very small amounts, considering we have 100 billion euros in our securities portfolio,” Intesa CEO Carlo Messina told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Milan on Tuesday. “It’s an experiment, a test.”
Intesa set up a proprietary trading desk for digital assets in 2023 and started handling spot trades with cryptos last year.
The news first surfaced when the bank’s employees leaked an internal email on the image-sharing platform 4Chan. Following the leak, Niccolo Bardoscia, Intesa Sanpaolo’s head of digital assets trading and investment, officially confirmed the acquisition in an email to the media, revealing that the bank now holds 11 BTC.
While Bardoscia confirmed the purchase, the executive did not reveal exactly why the bank had acquired BTC. Therefore, it is still unclear if the purchase was to diversify Intesa Sanpaolo’s investment portfolio or if it was a pilot to offer crypto services, according to CryptoRank.
The acquisition is not the bank’s first foray into blockchain. In July last year, Intesa Sanpaolo pioneered a $25.7 million digital bond issuance on the Polygon network in collaboration with state-owned bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA. In addition, Intesa Sanpaolo broadened its crypto desk to allow spot trading. Before then, it only offered clients crypto options, futures, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Intesa Sanpaolo’s purchase came as Europe eased regulations. The Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulatory guideline came into full effect in December, a milestone that’s expected to pave the way for more digital-asset adoption among financial companies.
While Intesa is currently only prop trading — buying and selling using its own balance sheet rather than on behalf of clients — the crypto desk’s activities fit with the bank’s broader blockchain projects, and it may be a stepping stone for eventually trading digital assets for institutional customers.
“We won’t become a Bitcoin provider but we need to know how to do so if our bigger clients ask us to,” Messina told reporters on Tuesday.
Intesa carried out the Bitcoin purchase through Boerse Stuttgart Digital’s institutional trading platform, a spokesperson from the German exchange group said in a statement.
After rallying in the wake of Donald Trump’s US election win in early November, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have had a shaky start to the year, hurt by concerns that persistent inflation will curtail the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy easing.
Bitcoin briefly slid below $90,000 on Monday — a drop of almost 5% from the start of 2025 — before a rebound that left it slightly up for January. The largest cryptocurrency soared to a record high of $108,316 last month.
This BTC acquisition signals a shift in sentiment within Italy. As the country’s largest bank leads the way, other financial institutions may follow suit, potentially accelerating adoption.
The move stands out in Italy, where the central bank governor, Fabio Panetta, has consistently cautioned against digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, describing them as “unsecured.”
That said, the bank has a long way to go to catch up with its US peers: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has amassed $51 billion in assets in the spot Bitcoin ETF it launched a year ago, and is pushing to have its money-market digital coin more widely used as collateral for crypto derivatives trades. JPMorgan is preparing to offer instant settlement for foreign-exchange conversions between the dollar and the euro through its blockchain platform.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s value continues to surge, with optimism growing about easing regulatory hurdles under incoming U.S. President Donald Trump. Some analysts expect it to more than double in value by the end of this year.
