Citigroup (C) plans to launch institutional bitcoin custody later this 12 months, a part of a broader push to combine digital belongings into the financial institution’s conventional monetary infrastructure.
Nisha Surendran, who heads Citi’s digital asset custody product buildout, described the initiative in a speech on the World Technique Discussion board on Thursday as an effort to “make bitcoin bankable.”
That begins with institutional-grade key administration and pockets infrastructure. However, Surendran mentioned, the ambition is broader: to deliver bitcoin into the identical custody, reporting and management frameworks that purchasers already use for conventional belongings.
“We will likely be providing our purchasers a single service mannequin throughout crypto, securities and cash,” mentioned Surendran, who introduced these plans through the World Technique 2026 discussion board. Bitcoin positions, she mentioned, will stream into the identical reporting channels and tax workflows as equities and bonds.
Shoppers will be capable to instruct transactions through SWIFT, APIs or person interfaces, she added. “From a consumer perspective, all they need to care about is that they instruct us. We deal with all of the clearing and settlement complexity, after which we report again.”
Shopper demand
One cause Citi is shifting in direction of bankable bitcoin is consumer demand.
Citi has surveyed its purchasers, Surendran mentioned, including that they “don’t wish to deal with wallets and keys and one-time addresses.” As a substitute, they need publicity to bitcoin inside acquainted banking programs. Citi additionally needs to allow its purchasers to cross-margin crypto and conventional belongings, Surendran mentioned.
She described a future account construction during which a number of asset sorts sit below a single grasp safekeeping or custody account, together with U.S. Treasuries, overseas bonds, tokenized cash market funds, and bitcoin.
“The truth that all of those belongings are accessible inside the identical account construction makes it simpler to make use of them for cross-margining,” she mentioned, together with the potential for utilizing crypto belongings at conventional exchanges or broker-dealers, and vice versa. Citi intends to construct infrastructure to assist that, she mentioned.
It is not shocking that banking giants are pushing additional into the digital asset house. Institutional buyers have been searching for publicity to the sector from conventional monetary establishments for a number of years. What started with BlackRock providing exchange-traded funds to assist extra buyers achieve publicity has now unfold to quite a few banks and monetary establishments, which proceed to combine their legacy monetary companies into the digital belongings sector.
For instance, Morgan Stanley, which oversees roughly $8 trillion in belongings, has lately filed for bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana exchange-traded merchandise and is exploring pockets know-how throughout its wealth platform. It is usually rolling out spot crypto buying and selling on the E*TRADE platform and evaluating lending and yield alternatives tied to digital belongings.
“We have to construct this internally. We are able to’t simply hire the know-how,” the banking large’s lately appointed head of digital belongings, Amy Golenberg, mentioned on the Technique World occasion in a presentation previous to Surendran.
Constructing for a 24/7 market
Citi, which connects to greater than 220 cost and settlement networks globally, has additionally begun with non-public permissioned blockchains earlier than increasing to public networks as laws turned clearer and consumer demand elevated. One thing just like what one other banking large, JPMorgan, has executed with its JPM Coin.
One stay use case is Citi Token Providers for money, a 24/7 blockchain-based community used to maneuver cash inside Citi’s world system. “As we transfer into the world of 24/7 belongings like bitcoin, we positively want 24/7 U.S. {dollars} or 24/7 digital cash,” she mentioned, including that Citi’s inside programs are being tailored for round the clock assist.
The 24/7 market can also be one thing institutional purchasers have been asking legacy monetary establishments for. The New York Inventory Change (NYSE) mentioned final month that it plans to introduce an around-the-clock, blockchain-based buying and selling venue for tokenized shares and exchange-traded funds later this 12 months.
NYSE’s principal competitor within the U.S., Nasdaq, revealed in December that it was planning to facilitate practically round the clock buying and selling for shares and exchange-traded merchandise (ETPs), in a bid to match the more and more world nature of economic markets and investor demand.
