Citi Set to Launch Native Bitcoin Custody Before Year-End

Citi is set to launch native Bitcoin custody for institutional clients before the end of this year, placing it firmly in the competitive field of large custodians building out digital asset infrastructure.

The bank has confirmed that its Custody+ suite will include Bitcoin custody as one of eight capabilities across three buckets: speed and certainty, intelligence, and control. According to Citi's Investor Services division, the service will launch 'starting with the custody of Bitcoin,' within the infrastructure bucket alongside a white-label platform for other institutions.

Citi is pitching its advantage as the integration of traditional and crypto custody capabilities within the same framework, using the same account structure, reporting stack, and risk and compliance workflows used for equities and bonds. This allows clients to access their Bitcoin holdings without them living in a separate wallet product.

Institutional investors 'no longer want to manage digital assets in isolation from their traditional book-of-record,' according to Amit Agarwal, Head of Custody at Citi. The bank has invested over $2 billion annually in its platform strategy and says that the launch coincides with the completion of the U.S. rollout of its patented Single Event Processing (SEP) technology.