A former chief executive officer at investment giant Citigroup is predicting that all major financial institutions will consider trading crypto assets.
Vikram Pandit, who led Citigroup from 2007-2012, says in a Bloomberg interview that in the coming years, he sees large financial players exploring the idea of offering services related to crypto assets.
“[In] one to three years, every large bank and, or securities firm is going to actively think about ‘Shouldn’t I also be trading and selling cryptocurrency assets?’”
Pandit adds that he’s also hopeful central banks will adopt digital currencies, citing the “cumbersome” nature of paper-based banking systems.
“My big hope is that central banks around the world understand the benefit of a central bank digital currency, and move on to accept, adopt them.”
Pandit now serves as CEO and chairman of The Orogen Group, a financial services firm he co-founded. He says he’s invested in US-based crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain developer platform, Alchemy Insights.
Citigroup’s current CEO, Jane Fraser, has also spoken in support of crypto, noting there is a place for digital assets in the traditional financial system.
Fraser said that she is currently working on building the infrastructure necessary for enabling real-time payments.
“For me as a CEO, I’m working to connect our clients to wallets. We’re enabling our businesses and our corporate clients to accept consumer payments. We’re building the infrastructure for retail real-time payments.
But we’re doing so cautiously, because the space is moving so quickly and not all the guard rails that you would like to see are yet in place.”
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