A former chief executive of Citigroup stated that crypto trading services will become a priority for every major securities firm and bank in the next one to three years. He also expressed his hope of central banks all over the globe accepting these digital currencies. Vikram Pandit, the Indian-American banker, who has also served as the CEO of Citigroup, attended the Singapore Fintech Festival that was held last week. During the event, he talked about the outlook for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and cryptocurrency as well. Pandit had been appointed to the role of the CEO of Citigroup back in December 2007.
He had been at the helm of the US bank at the time the financial crisis hit. He had worked at Morgan Stanley prior to Citi, where he had joined in 1983. He had ultimately become the chief operating officer as well as the president of the institutional securities and investment banking businesses of the company. In 2016, he had also co-founded Orogen, an investment firm, where he is currently serving as the chief executive and also the chairman. Speaking at the fintech conference, he elaborated that all prominent financial institutions would soon be contemplating providing crypto trading or other crypto-related services.
He said that in 1 to 3 years, every securities firm, or large bank would begin to actively think about selling and trading crypto assets. Already, there is an increasing number of banks that are taking an interest in the crypto space, which includes prominent names like the Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand, the Commonwealth Bank in Australia and Singapore’s DBS. Apart from that, there are also some major investment banks that have joined the bandwagon as well and are now offering crypto investment products to their clients too. These names include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.
Apart from these banks, even payment companies, including the likes of PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard, also have their respective crypto projects in the works. As far as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are concerned, Pandit elaborated that modernizing a paper-based banking system for moving money in different parts of the world was ‘cumbersome’ and also stated that it adds ‘deadweight’ costs. He talked about a central bank digital currency that would be available to everyone i.e. every retail participant over the globe. He said that it was his hope that global central banks would understand the benefit of a CBDC and accept and adopt them in the future.
It is a fact that an increasing number of central banks worldwide are contemplating the concept of introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC). According to the CBDC tracker of the Atlantic Council, there are currently 87 countries exploring the idea. From this list, 7 of them have been launched, while 17 of them have pilot programs. There are 15 CBDCs that are under development and research is being conducted by 39 countries. One of the countries that have made a lot of progress in terms of CBDC is China, which is already running large-scale tests of the digital yuan.