ING Germany expanded its retail brokerage on February 2, 2026, adding roughly 50 crypto exchange-traded products and notes from issuers including Bitwise, VanEck, and 21Shares to its Direct Depot line-up. The bank framed the rollout as a regulated, securities-account-based on-ramp for its ~3.2 million retail brokerage clients to access major digital-asset exposure without managing separate wallets or private keys.
The suite combines physically backed ETPs with issuer-managed ETNs and is designed to trade on regulated European venues such as Xetra. The announcement highlighted specific listings such as the Bitwise Core Bitcoin ETP (BTC1), the Bitwise MSCI Digital Assets Select 20 ETP (DA20), and the Bitwise Physical Ethereum ETP (ZETH), alongside a VanEck line-up of roughly 10 single-asset ETNs and two basket ETNs spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and other tokens.
Product scope and execution setup
From a portfolio-construction standpoint, the offering is positioned to cover flagship single-asset exposure as well as diversified index-style allocations, while keeping everything inside the bank’s existing securities framework. In that setup, custody responsibility sits with the issuer custody model embedded in the listed instrument structure, rather than requiring retail clients to custody private keys directly.
ING Germany also streamlined the commercial terms around trading and accumulation. Orders of €1,000 or more are executed commission-free, smaller trades carry a €3.90 fee, and savings-plan purchases of ETNs are available without commission, aligning the crypto ETP/ETN experience with familiar brokerage mechanics.
The bank contextualized the rollout within the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework and reiterated standard retail risk disclosures. That positioning pairs the convenience of a regulated wrapper with explicit warnings around extreme price volatility and issuer risk.
What changes for clients and what doesn’t
External partners also reinforced the “ease-of-access” narrative for end users. Martijn Rozemuller described the collaboration as enabling low-threshold access through exchange-traded products that plug into existing custody and reporting rails, while Hunter Horsley publicly praised the rollout for expanding regulated access.
For retail traders and wealth managers, the key operational shift is consolidation: exposures can be built, monitored, and reported in a single securities account rather than split across separate crypto platforms. At the same time, the wrapper does not change the underlying market behavior of the assets, meaning market risk and issuer counterparty risk remain central even as the user experience becomes simpler.
Looking ahead, the offering could steer incremental retail flows into exchange-listed crypto instruments and deepen reliance on issuer custody, liquidity provisioning, and compliance processes on regulated venues. ING Germany emphasized the familiar hazards that still apply in practice, including liquidity constraints, potential issuer insolvency, and ongoing regulatory evolution that could alter product economics or tax treatment for holders.
