2021 has proven to be quite a happening year for cryptocurrency and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. In another indication of the growth of the crypto space and its increasing adoption, Citigroup announced that it will be expanding its digital asset division.
According to the announcement, they are hiring a 100 more people to add to their crypto team. The company has already hired Puneet Singhvi as the head of their digital asset division. It is important to note that Citigroup is one of the top banks in the United States and it appears to be doubling down on its crypto investments.
Therefore, it is creating a new team that will help the bank in pursuing said endeavors. Bloomberg had reported only recently that Citigroup was going to make a greater investment into digital assets by hiring more than 100 people to join its team.
The head of this new division would be Puneet Singhvi, as mentioned above, and will be reporting directly to the Head of Business Development at the bank i.e. Emily Turner.
The new division that has been established by the third-largest financial institution in the world will be focused on developing a strategy for helping the company’s internal operations, such as investment banking, trading as well as the trading of securities.
Furthermore, the team has also been established for working with blockchain technology and digital assets as a whole. Turner also talked about the involvement of the bank with cryptocurrencies and said that these digital currencies offer benefits of instant processing, transparency, programmability, efficiency and fractionalization.
She also disclosed that the new unit would also work on teaming up with different shareholders, including regulators, clients as well as startups. Citigroup had decided to make their foray in the crypto space back in May.
It was only a couple of months later that the company announced that they would be interested in Bitcoin futures trading at the CME i.e. the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. However, the company later announced that they were going to exercise caution before they planned on introducing any such offering.
It is important to note that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has received numerous applications of such a product, but has been very stingy when it comes to approval. Most importantly, Citigroup is certainly not the only top financial institution in the US to be looking into crypto investments.
There are a number of other renowned financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, which are also offering crypto services that were launched this year. The offering of crypto investments by JPMorgan did come as a surprise because they had previously declared that cryptocurrencies were not an asset class.
However, now it appears that the investment bank doesn’t have a problem in offering Bitcoin derivatives. Its wealth management clients now have access to about six cryptocurrency funds.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has also introduced the buying and selling of Bitcoin futures on the CME exchange in block trades, which is again a notable offering.
By Isabelle OHara – shutterstock.com
