The Wall Road banking behemoth introduced earlier at present that it’s making ready to take one other step into the cryptocurrency trade, highlighting plans to launch digital asset custody later in 2026.
Bitcoin would be the first asset supported by the brand new service, which can sit alongside the financial institution’s conventional custody enterprise below its newly unveiled Custody+ platform.
The press launch revealed on August 18 indicated that Custody+ will act as a collection of near- and real-time companies designed to accommodate monetary markets more and more shifting towards steady buying and selling and sooner settlement. Given one of many key variations between conventional monetary belongings and crypto – particularly, the truth that the latter operates 24/7 – Citi defined that the crypto-focused a part of the enterprise will launch later this yr.
“Digital belongings already function on near-instant settlement, 24/7. Citi expects to go dwell with digital asset custody later this yr, beginning with the custody of Bitcoin. That is being constructed on Citi’s widespread digital asset structure, and we are going to supply a one-stop custody expertise. Shoppers will entry conventional and crypto custody capabilities inside the identical framework for an built-in expertise.”
This initiative offers a extra concrete timeline of Citi’s plans concerning the cryptocurrency trade, because it stated final yr that it was making ready to launch such custody in 2026 with no clear timeline.
Except for beginning with BTC, the banking large didn’t disclose which digital belongings are scheduled to observe swimsuit.
Citi has dabbled within the trade for years. It ramped up its efforts in 2021 by including as much as 100 individuals to its cryptocurrency staff. In the meantime, different US institutional behemoths, equivalent to Jane Road Group, have elevated their ETF publicity to BTC.
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