PANews reported on January 14 that according to The Block, in response to the earlier report that the proprietary trading department of Intesa Sanpaolo, the largest banking group in Italy, purchased 11 BTC , Intesa CEO Carlo Messina described the acquisition as "an experiment, a test" during an event in Milan on Tuesday. He pointed out that the investment was insignificant compared to the bank's $100 billion securities portfolio; Messina said: "This shows that we can pay some attention to digital channels, but the investment amount is very limited, which also shows that if some high-end customers require such investment, we are ready." Messina clarified that he personally did not invest in Bitcoin.