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Five big US banks just printed $49 billion in combined profit for the quarter. JPMorgan Chase led the pack with $21.2 billion. Goldman Sachs had its best quarter ever. And the numbers are wild enough to matter well beyond Wall Street.
JPMorgan’s profit jumped 41% from the same period a year ago. Stock trading revenue alone spiked 86%, hitting $6.03 billion. Investment banking fees rose 30% to $3.3 billion — the strongest showing since 2021. On top of that, a longstanding stake in Visa added a $4.6 billion gain for the quarter. That’s not a lending story. That’s a trading and infrastructure story, and the distinction matters.
Goldman’s quarter was basically historic.
Net revenues came in at $20.34 billion. Net profit landed at $6.63 billion. Fees from underwriting new shares surged 130%. Fees from arranging new debt climbed 75%. Total investment banking fees rose 55% to $3.40 billion. Goldman’s desks were busy, and it showed.
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup Also Surge
Bank of America posted a 27% profit jump, totaling $9.1 billion. Wells Fargo earned $6.4 billion. Citigroup moved from $4.0 billion to $5.8 billion year over year. So it wasn’t just the two giants — pretty much every major name on the list put up strong numbers.
What drove it? Not traditional lending, mostly. Trading desks and dealmaking carried the quarter. High market volatility tends to be good for banks that own the infrastructure through which money moves. Fees stack up fast when transaction volumes rise, and they’ve been rising. Investors looking for proof of resilience got it.
But there’s a bigger picture forming here, and it runs straight into crypto.
JPMorgan’s Kinexys and the Blockchain Infrastructure Fight
High trading revenues and strong risk appetite in markets tend to pull capital toward riskier assets too. Crypto markets have seen increased activity since US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024. A market environment where banks are printing record profits and trading desks are humming is generally not a bad backdrop for Bitcoin.
And the infrastructure angle is even more direct.
JPMorgan’s blockchain division, Kinexys, has processed over $4 trillion since it launched. It’s now averaging more than $7 billion in daily transactions. The JPMD deposit token runs on Base, a public Ethereum network. That’s not a pilot program. That’s a bank with $21 billion in quarterly profit putting real volume through a public blockchain.
It’s hard to overstate how fast the competitive landscape is shifting. A consortium of 17 major banks is building private blockchain networks to handle the transition to digital finance. BlackRock and HSBC have joined a UK tokenization effort that’s projected to contribute $44 billion annually to the economy by 2035. More than 15 lenders are actively working to implement tokenized finance solutions on private networks right now.
Stablecoins are part of this too. They’re positioning as the next generation of payment rails, and the GENIUS Act — which brought regulatory clarity to the stablecoin space — has accelerated institutional interest. Banks, stablecoin issuers, and public blockchains are all competing to own the same thing: the pipes through which money moves.
JPMorgan already owns a version of those pipes. Kinexys processes $7 billion a day. That’s not a bet on the future — that’s current volume, running now.
The irony isn’t lost on crypto natives. The bank that Jamie Dimon famously criticized for years is now one of the largest processors of blockchain-based transactions in the world. Whether that’s a win for crypto or a sign that traditional finance is absorbing the technology on its own terms is probably a matter of who you ask.
What’s clear is that the competition for financial infrastructure — who builds it, who owns it, who profits from it — is the actual story underneath these earnings numbers. Trading desks had a great quarter. But the longer-term game is about rails.
Stablecoins want to be those rails. Public blockchains like Ethereum want to be those rails. And banks like JPMorgan are building their own version, processing billions daily, while also parking deposit tokens on Base. It’s not either/or anymore. It’s messy and overlapping and probably still early.
The 17-bank consortium building private networks won’t be the last entrant. And with $49 billion in quarterly profit sitting across five institutions, the capital to fund that buildout is clearly there.
Kinexys averages $7 billion a day. The JPMD token runs on Ethereum’s Base network. And Goldman just had its best quarter ever.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much profit did JPMorgan Chase report this quarter?
JPMorgan Chase reported $21.2 billion in profit for the quarter, a 41% increase from the prior year, driven largely by trading and investment banking activity.
What is JPMorgan’s Kinexys and how active is it?
Kinexys is JPMorgan’s blockchain division, which has processed over $4 trillion since its launch and now averages more than $7 billion in daily transactions, with its JPMD deposit token operating on Base, a public Ethereum network.
