Citigroup ( C ) plans to launch institutional bitcoin custody later this year, part of a broader push to integrate digital assets into the bank’s traditional financial infrastructure.
Nisha Surendran, who heads Citi’s digital asset product development, described the initiative in a speech at the World Strategy Forum on Thursday as an effort to “make bitcoin bankable.”
It begins with institutional-grade key management and wallet infrastructure. But, Surendran said, the ambition is broader: to bring bitcoin into the same custody, reporting and control frameworks that clients already use for traditional assets.
“We will offer our customers a single service model across crypto, securities and money,” said Surendran, who announced these plans during the World Strategy 2026 forum. Bitcoin positions, she said, will flow into the same reporting channels and tax workflows as stocks and bonds.
Customers will be able to direct transactions via SWIFT, APIs or user interfaces, she added. “From a client perspective, all they have to worry about is instructing us. We handle all the clearing and settlement complexity and then we report back.”
Customer demand
One of the reasons Citi is moving towards bankable bitcoin is because of customer demand.
Citi has researched its customers, Surendran said, adding that they “don’t want to deal with wallets and keys and one-time addresses.” Instead, they want exposure to bitcoin within familiar banking systems. Citi also wants to enable its clients to cross-margin crypto and traditional assets, Surendran said.
She described a future account structure where multiple asset types sit under a single master depository or custodial account, including U.S. Treasuries, foreign bonds, tokenized money market funds and bitcoin.
“The fact that all these assets are available within the same account structure makes it easier to use them for cross-margining,” she said, including the ability to use crypto assets on traditional exchanges or brokers and vice versa. Citi intends to build infrastructure to support that, she said.
It’s no surprise that banking giants are pushing further into the digital asset space. For several years, institutional investors have sought exposure to the sector from traditional financial institutions. What began with BlackRock offering exchange-traded funds to help more investors gain exposure has now spread to numerous banks and financial institutions that continue to integrate their legacy financial services into the digital asset sector.
For example, Morgan Stanley, which oversees about $8 trillion in assets, recently filed for bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana exchange-traded products and is exploring wallet technology across its wealth platform. It is also rolling out spot crypto trading on the E*TRADE platform and evaluating lending and yield opportunities linked to digital assets.
“We have to build this in-house. We can’t just rent the technology,” the banking giant’s newly appointed head of digital assets, Amy Golenberg, said at the Strategy World event in a presentation ahead of Surendran.
Building for a 24/7 market
Citi, which connects to more than 220 payment and settlement networks globally, also started with private peer-reviewed blockchains before expanding to public networks as regulations became clearer and customer demand increased. Something similar to what another banking giant, JPMorgan, has done with its JPM Coin.
A live use case is Citi Token Services for cash, a 24/7 blockchain-based network used to move money within Citi’s global system. “As we move into the world of 24/7 assets like bitcoin, we absolutely need 24/7 US dollars or 24/7 digital money,” she said, adding that Citi’s internal systems are being adapted for round-the-clock support.
The 24/7 market is also something that institutional clients have been asking for from legacy financial institutions. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) said last month that it plans to introduce a 24-hour, blockchain-based trading platform for tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds later this year.
The NYSE’s main rival in the US, Nasdaq, revealed in December that it planned to facilitate near-24-hour trading for stocks and exchange-traded products (ETPs) in a bid to match the increasingly global nature of financial markets and investors.
