Vikram Pandit, chairman of The Orogen Group and former CEO of Citigroup, spoke with Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin at the Singapore Fintech Festival on the future of cryptocurrency trading for financial institutions.
According to Pandit, the bulk of significant banks and other financial institutions will enter the cryptocurrency trading industry in the next few years, giving their consumers access to the market.
At the moment, traditional financial institutions are merely looking into methods to enter the digital asset market. After Bitcoin‘s run to $65,000 and the approval of the first U.S. Bitcoin ETF, the industry grew in popularity.
While banks used to hazard a bet as to whether or not they wanted to join the rally, some have already begun to work with digital assets. Since last week, Goldman Sachs Group has been offering crypto futures trading. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, for example, has yet to purchase and maintain bitcoin assets.
Pandit’s enthusiasm is backed up by his own financial decisions since the banker has invested heavily in crypto-related companies such as Coinbase and Alchemy Insights. He hopes that central banks would follow in the footsteps of private organizations in adopting digital assets and will work more to build the central bank’s digital currency.
Pandit believes that the adoption of digital currencies will modernize the paper-based financial system while also making the exchange process more convenient.
While most countries are still wary of cryptocurrencies, several are already striving toward widespread adoption. El Salvador was the first country to recognize Bitcoin as legal money.
