SWIFT Is Ready to Go Onchain While Banks Hit 32% Bitcoin Adoption

Wall Street's Bitcoin adoption is now getting measured with an actual index, while SWIFT is rolling out a blockchain ledger. 

TL;DR

• Strategy launched a Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index that scored 25 of the world's largest banks on the extent to which they've integrated Bitcoin. 

• Swift launched its blockchain-based ledger, with 17 banks from six continents preparing to pilot live tokenized deposit transactions on the new infrastructure.

Wall Street's Bitcoin Adoption Now Has An Index 📊

For years, the claim that "banks are adopting Bitcoin" has lacked a scoreboard. Now, we have one. 

Strategy, the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, published its Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index on July 13. 

The index scores 25 major banks on how deeply they have integrated Bitcoin into their business, using data pulled from public sources with a July 10 cutoff. The headline number is 32%. The world's largest banks are, by Strategy's measure, about a third of the way to full institutional Bitcoin adoption.

The scoring covers five categories: trading, custody, products, lending, and executive activity. Each category uses a Harvey balls system with five discrete levels, from zero implementation to full implementation, which are then blended into a single adoption percentage.

The individual rankings are also an interesting story.

Fidelity leads at 71%, which shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention. Fidelity launched Fidelity Digital Assets in 2018 — six years before spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved — and used that head start to enter the ETF race as an issuer, not a distributor. They now run the full stack: custody, ETFs, spot trading, lending, and executive commitment.

BNY sits second at 46%, and Goldman Sachs at 45%. JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup are all at 43%. That top tier is essentially the same list of firms that have been most publicly integrating Bitcoin over the past two years. Most European and Japanese lenders sit below 30%. 

A few years ago, this index would have been a rounding error. Today, the number is 32%. Bitcoin adoption at banks is on the rise, even if a lot of die-hard Bitcoiners would prefer that not to be the case. 

SWIFT's Blockchain Ledger Is Ready for Its First Live Bank Pilots 🌐

On July 9, SWIFT announced that its blockchain-based ledger is ready for initial use. Seventeen banks from six continents are set to pioneer live tokenized-deposit transactions over the new infrastructure.

The list reads like an atlas of tier-one global banks: ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand, HSBC, Itaú Unibanco, Lloyds, Mashreq, MUFG, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB, and Wells Fargo.

Participating banks issue tokenized deposits on their own ledgers, and SWIFT's shared ledger provides the orchestration layer connecting them.

Customers can move funds overnight and on weekends before final settlement is completed through existing systems. Swift describes this as an initial controlled go-live phase, with functionality expanding after the first round of pilots.

For context, SWIFT provides the messaging infrastructure used by thousands of financial institutions across more than 200 markets, and moves the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days. The organization that plays a central role in global cross-border payments is now running an orchestration layer for tokenized bank deposits on its own blockchain. 

I have been saying for years that much of finance will run on blockchains, and now we’re starting to see that come to fruition. 

Elsewhere in Bitcoin 📖

A quick look at what else has been happening in Bitcoin:

• Corporate Bitcoin buying outpaces new mining supply by 2.1x in 2026

• Circle received an OCC bank charter, becoming the first federally chartered stablecoin issuer

• The DTCC tokenized securities pilot went live on July 15

Your fellow stacker in sats, 

Patrick Lowry

PS: If you want to see how the value of goods and services changes when priced in Bitcoin, check out the Samara Bitcoin CPI. It might give you a new perspective on holding Bitcoin on your company's balance sheet or just as an individual.

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