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Every Big Bank Will Think About Crypto Trading, Says Ex-Citi CEO

Vikram Pandit believes every major financial institution will be considering trading crypto “in one to three years.”

Updated May 11, 2023, 5:46 p.m. Published Nov 8, 2021, 9:32 a.m.

Vikram Pandit at The Bloomberg Year Ahead 2015 Conference (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Every major financial institution will be thinking about buying and selling crypto in the years to come, according to former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

In “one to three years, every large bank and/or securities firm is going to actively think about ‘shouldn’t I also be trading and selling cryptocurrency assets?’ “Pandit said at the Singapore Fintech Festival, according to a Bloomberg report on Monday.
While numerous big banks have shown signs of offering crypto exposure to clients through indirect investments such as funds, none of them have yet offered direct exposure. Goldman Sachs’ crypto desk, for example, supports bitcoin futures trading.
Pandit resigned from Citi in 2012 and co-founded investment firm The Orogen Group in 2016.
In 2015, he also invested $75 million in the now Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase, alongside the New York Stock Exchange and other investors.

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Jamie Crawley

Jamie has been part of CoinDesk's news team since February 2021, focusing on breaking news, Bitcoin tech and protocols and crypto VC. He holds BTC, ETH and DOGE.

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