Bank Leumi rents Galaxy's crypto stack and puts BTC, ETH and SOL in its brokerage app

Bank Leumi, Israel's largest bank, said it will let customers buy, hold and sell Bitcoin, Ether and Solana inside its Leumi Trade capital markets app from early 2027, with Galaxy Digital supplying both the execution and the custody ^[1][2][4][5]. The point of sale for retail crypto is shifting from exchange apps to the app where the customer already manages stocks and bonds ^[13], and the bank is renting the machinery rather than building it.

The rental terms are unusually legible. Trading runs through GalaxyOne Institutional, Galaxy's platform aimed at banks and asset managers ^[4]. Custody runs on Galaxy's custody infrastructure platform, formerly the Israeli firm GK8 ^[5], an air-gapped wallet business Galaxy picked up after the collapse of Celsius ^[6]. Customers do not open a separate exchange account or hold a personal wallet ^[3]. Leumi supplies the customer base, the brand and the regulatory relationship; Galaxy supplies everything that touches a blockchain, and holds a New York DFS BitLicense plus a money transmission licence from May 2026 ^[12]. Bitcoin, Ether and Solana are the named launch assets, with other selected coins to follow ^[1][21].

This is Leumi's second attempt. In March 2022, its Pepper Invest unit said it would enable Bitcoin and Ether trading through Paxos, also billing itself as an Israeli first; the service never launched because the regulatory sign-off never arrived ^[7]. The 2027 target sits behind the same gate: Bank of Israel approval ^[8]. That is roughly five years between the first announcement and the current target date ^[25].

What changed is the rulebook rather than the ambition. The Bank of Israel scrapped automatic delays on crypto-linked deposits and barred banks from issuing blanket refusals of funds from licensed providers ^[9]. The Capital Market Authority set wallet-security and capital floors of 2 million shekels for firms without custody and 2.5 million with it, plus mandatory segregation of client assets ^[10]. An August 1 circular widened permitted trading to the top 50 coins by market capitalisation above a $500 million threshold ^[11]. Only then did a bank distribution channel become buildable.

The addressable prize is modest in absolute terms. Chainalysis figures cited by Cryptopolitan put Israel's on-chain value at an estimated $22 billion between June 2024 and June 2025, against more than $500 billion across the wider Middle East and North Africa, which grew 33% annually ^[19]. Israel is therefore something like 4% of its region's on-chain activity ^[26].

For Galaxy, bank distribution is the more interesting half of the trade. It reported an $85 million net loss in the second quarter, attributed largely to falling digital asset prices, while its digital assets business produced $66 million in adjusted gross profit, up 34% quarter on quarter ^[15]. Its shares traded at $21.38, down about 25% over the past year, according to Yahoo Finance data cited by Cointelegraph ^[16]. Lior Lamesh, CEO of Galaxy Israel, said banks that move first "will define the era that follows" ^[17][23]. Maya Ravia, Leumi's Head of Strategy, framed it as simple, secure and regulated access ^[18][24].

Watch three things: whether the Bank of Israel signs off, since it has said no once before ^[7][8]; the fees and eligibility rules, which have not been disclosed ^[20]; and whether rival Israeli banks license the same stack rather than build their own.