Intesa Sanpaolo lifts crypto holdings to $235 million, adds Ethereum and XRP

By March 31, Intesa Sanpaolo had lifted its crypto-linked holdings to about $235 million—more than double the roughly $100 million it held at the end of Q4 2025—while opening fresh positions in Ethereum and XRP and sharply reducing its Solana exposure, according to a Criptovaluta.it report. For Italy’s largest bank, the jump is meaningful on size alone. The composition is the bigger signal. What had looked a quarter earlier like a narrow bitcoin-adjacent position now reads like a deliberate spread across several parts of the crypto market.

Compared with the level CoinDesk reported in February, the increase works out to roughly 135 per cent. Intesa’s earlier disclosure centred on nearly $100 million in bitcoin ETF holdings alongside a hedge tied to Strategy. That snapshot read as a contained institutional test. The new quarter-end picture is broader, and it suggests the bank used the first three months of 2026 to widen the trade rather than simply sit on an early bitcoin position.

Details carried in a KuCoin market brief show Intesa held 712,319 shares of Grayscale XRP Trust worth about $18 million at quarter-end, and 3,147,918 shares of the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust. The numbers matter beyond the headline dollar total. The bank was no longer expressing crypto demand through bitcoin alone. It was adding exposure to the second-largest token and to XRP, where the investment case tracks a payments and settlement narrative distinct from bitcoin’s.

Elsewhere in the book, Intesa appears to have all but walked away from Solana. A MEXC report said the bank cut its Bitwise Solana Staking ETF position to 2,817 shares from 266,320 previously—a sharp retreat from one of the market’s higher-beta token exposures. The first-quarter reshuffle looks less like a blanket increase in risk and more like a rotation toward assets that large institutions may find deeper and easier to justify internally.

The reported exposure sits in trusts and ETF-style vehicles rather than in directly held tokens. For a regulated lender, that distinction matters. Listed wrappers fit into existing custody, valuation and reporting systems more comfortably than spot holdings on external exchanges would. They also give risk teams a cleaner way to scale a position without having to frame the move as a wholesale embrace of crypto trading.

From hedge to allocation

For investors reading institutional demand, the move from hedge to allocation is where the signal lives. A single bitcoin ETF line can be explained away as a tactical hedge, a treasury experiment or a one-off macro trade. A book that adds Ethereum and XRP while pruning Solana looks different. Ethereum gives exposure to the largest smart-contract network and, through the vehicle Intesa is reported to own, to staking-linked economics. XRP offers a different expression of market liquidity and payments-related demand. Even without a public strategy memo from the bank, the mix looks curated.

The disclosure surfaced against a stronger backdrop for Intesa itself. Reuters reported on May 8 that the bank posted record earnings and ruled out a deal for insurer Generali, reinforcing the profitability cushion behind management decisions in the first months of 2026. Reuters did not tie the earnings result to the crypto positions, and Intesa has not publicly described the holdings as a strategic pivot. Record profitability still makes it easier for investors to see the crypto sleeve as an intentional risk choice rather than a sideshow.

The latest disclosed positions suggest Intesa is moving past a bitcoin-only proxy and toward a more selective multi-asset crypto book. The absolute size is modest by big-bank standards—the update does not redraw the map for European finance by itself. The direction matters, though. The bank added Ethereum and XRP. It nearly stepped away from Solana. That pair of decisions says as much about changing institutional preferences as the $235 million headline does, and it will keep Intesa in focus as investors watch how far mainstream lenders are willing to go.