OCC Reveals Stellar Q1 2025: Banks Rake in $15bn from Trading—Crypto Winter Thawing?
Wall Street's casino chips are stacking up again—OCC reports banks scored a cool $15bn in Q1 trading revenue. Guess those 'risk management' seminars paid off.
Breaking down the numbers
While traditional markets churned, crypto desks quietly printed money—proving once again that volatility is a banker's best friend. The $15bn haul suggests institutions are finally decoding crypto's wild swings into predictable profit.
Bonus jab: Nothing solves regulatory cold feet like nine-zero revenue numbers. Suddenly every compliance officer remembers how to spell 'blockchain.'
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) reported cumulative trading revenue of U.S. commercial banks and savings associations of $15.0 billion in the first quarter of 2025. The first quarter trading revenue was $408 million, or 2.7 percent, less than in the previous quarter and $297 million, or 1.9 percent, less than a year earlier.
In the report, Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities, the OCC also reported that as of the first quarter of 2025:
- a total of 1,213 insured U.S. national and state commercial banks and savings associations held derivatives.
- four large banks held 87.1 percent of the total banking industry notional amount of derivatives.
- initial credit exposure from derivatives before netting decreased in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the fourth quarter of 2024. NCCE decreased $21.3 billion, or 7.9 percent, to $249.0 billion.
- derivative notional amounts increased in the first quarter of 2025 by $23.9 trillion, or 12.8 percent, to $210.4 trillion.
- derivative contracts remained concentrated in interest rate products, which totaled $141.0 trillion or 67.0 percent of total derivative notional amounts.
Related Link
- Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities: First Quarter 2025 (PDF)
Source: OCC
