Citigroup (C) plans to launch institutional bitcoin custody later this yr, 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 at the World Strategy Forum on Thursday as an effort to “make bitcoin bankable.”
That begins with institutional-grade key administration and pockets infrastructure. However, Surendran stated, the ambition is broader: to carry 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,” stated Surendran, who introduced these plans in the course of the World Technique 2026 discussion board. Bitcoin positions, she stated, will circulate into the identical reporting channels and tax workflows as equities and bonds.
Purchasers will likely be in a position to instruct transactions through SWIFT, APIs or consumer interfaces, she added. “From a shopper 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.”
Consumer demand
One cause Citi is shifting in direction of bankable bitcoin is shopper demand.
Citi has surveyed its purchasers, Surendran stated, including that they “don’t need to deal with wallets and keys and one-time addresses.” As an alternative, they need publicity to bitcoin inside acquainted banking programs. Citi additionally wants to allow its purchasers to cross-margin crypto and conventional belongings, Surendran stated.
She described a future account construction wherein a number of asset sorts sit beneath 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 throughout the identical account construction makes it simpler to use them for cross-margining,” she stated, together with the opportunity of utilizing crypto belongings at conventional exchanges or broker-dealers, and vice versa. Citi intends to construct infrastructure to help that, she stated.
It is not shocking that banking giants are pushing additional into the digital asset house. Institutional buyers have been in search of 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 providers into the digital belongings sector.
For instance, Morgan Stanley, which oversees roughly $8 trillion in belongings, has not too long ago filed for bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana exchange-traded products 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 want to construct this internally. We will’t simply lease the know-how,” the banking big’s not too long ago appointed head of digital belongings, Amy Golenberg, stated on the Technique World occasion in a presentation prior 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 rules turned clearer and shopper demand elevated. One thing comparable to what one other banking big, JPMorgan, has done with its JPM Coin.
One stay use case is Citi Token Providers for money, a 24/7 blockchain-based community used to transfer 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 stated, including that Citi’s inside programs are being tailored for round the clock help.
The 24/7 market can also be one thing institutional purchasers have been asking legacy monetary establishments for. The New York Inventory Change (NYSE) stated 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 yr.
NYSE’s most important 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.
