Every major financial institution will be thinking about trading cryptocurrencies within the next few years, according to Vikram Pandit, chairman of The Orogen Group and former chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc.
Meanwhile, Bank of America lats month announced it has launched digital asset research to “explore the implications across industries including finance, technology, supply chains, social media, and gaming,” while noting that “digital assets are transforming the way in which markets, businesses, and central banks operate.”
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) last week also said it will offer customers the ability to buy, sell, and hold crypto assets.
CBA CEO Matt Comyn said in a statement that, “the emergence and growing demand for digital currencies from customers creates both challenges and opportunities for the financial services sector, which has seen a significant number of new players and business models innovating in this area.”
“We believe we can play an important role in crypto to address what’s clearly a growing customer need and provide capability, security, and confidence in a crypto trading platform,” Comyn added.
“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 told Bloomberg, adding that it was “cumbersome” and creates a lot of “deadweight” cost, to transfer money around the world while also trying trying to modernize a paper-based banking system.
