PNC Becomes First U.S. Bank and Partners With Coinbase

What to Know

• PNC is now the first major U.S. bank to let clients buy, sell and hold bitcoin directly inside their existing accounts.
• Coinbase powers the entire backend, with custody, trading and compliance running through its Crypto-as-a-Service platform.
• The move signals a new adoption wave, with crypto becoming integrated into traditional banking.

 

PNC has become the first major U.S. bank to let its Private Bank clients buy, sell and hold bitcoin directly from their existing accounts. This new service is powered by Coinbase’s Crypto-as-a-Service platform. Now, PNC clients can access Bitcoin through the same banking app they already use, supported by Coinbase’s custody, trading and compliance infrastructure.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called the news “exciting,” writing, “Exciting to see more banks embrace crypto like this. PNC Private Bank clients can now buy, sell, and hold bitcoin in their existing accounts. PNC is the first major US bank to support this type of offering.”

New Kind of Bank & Crypto Partnership

Coinbase says this expansion builds on the two companies’ earlier partnership from July 2025. The goal is simple: bring crypto into the banking systems people already trust. For PNC, this integration aligns with the growing interest among customers who want digital assets but prefer to stay within the safety of their financial institution. Now, bitcoin trading sits alongside their everyday banking, investments, and wealth planning.

The bank’s leadership sees this as a necessary modernization. PNC CEO Bill Demchak said in an interview, “Fintech broadly wants to pick off parts of our relationship with product offerings that effectively make banking, in the extreme, just back office and there’s no reason they should be able to do that.” In other words, banks need to expand into digital assets if they want to remain central in their customers’ financial lives.

PNC Chief Investment Officer Amanda Agati added that Bitcoin trading is not their first crypto step. The bank previously gave clients access to ETFs tied to bitcoin and ether. But direct bitcoin trading is a new level of involvement and one the bank sees as a long-term need. “It is not so much about our client base being big investors today,” Agati said, “but they’re looking to us for an understanding of what these things are, how they work, and whether they make sense in the longer term.” PNC plans to extend bitcoin access to institutional clients next year, including nonprofits, endowments, and foundations.

Strong Community Reaction

Across the community, the reactions have been loud and mostly filled with excitement. Brickken wrote that seeing major U.S. banks offer direct bitcoin trading shows how demand for “compliant and secure” access to crypto is growing. They also said this step could help accelerate tokenized securities in the future.

But one of the biggest community reactions came from investor Zazul, who called the move “quietly huge.” According to him, the real story isn’t just that PNC added Bitcoin trading. It’s who is powering it. “Banks aren’t building crypto rails, they’re outsourcing them,” he wrote. “Coinbase is becoming the default vendor.” He explained that Coinbase’s Crypto-as-a-Service gives banks a ready-made stack, custody, trading, compliance, reporting, and settlement. This lets banks expand into crypto without building their own systems, which can take years and cost millions.

He also pointed out that PNC is a top-10 U.S. bank with over $500 billion in assets. When a bank that large chooses a vendor, others usually follow. He believes this partnership could spark the next wave of crypto adoption within traditional finance. “ETFs pulled institutions into crypto. CaaS brings crypto into banks,” he wrote. The biggest beneficiaries of this new banking-crypto integration will be BTC, USDC, ETH and LINK.

Final Thoughts

Between PNC’s customer reach and Coinbase’s market position, this partnership signals that crypto is no longer a separate world. It is becoming part of everyday banking, woven into systems people already use and trust.

If other major U.S. banks follow, this could be the start of a new era where digital assets live inside traditional finance not outside it.

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