In light of the growing number of adoption and the emergence of stablecoins, American multinational investment bank Citigroup is reportedly looking to issue its own stablecoin. Citigroup’s decision comes on the heels of the stablecoin launch by another leading investment bank, JPMorgan Chase.
As reported by Reuters, Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, said in a post-earnings conference call that the bank aims to facilitate digital payments by issuing a stablecoin. Citigroup, the third-largest US lender, is diving into the scope of reserve management for stablecoins, alongside looking into offering custody solutions for crypto assets.
The CEO added: “We are looking at the issuance of a Citi stablecoin, but probably most importantly is the tokenized deposit space, where we’re very active.”
JP Morgan’s JPMD stablecoin
Last month, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, announced that the company has launched a stablecoin token called JPMD on Coinbase’s public blockchain — Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain. However, in an earnings call, the CEO said that although he doesn’t get the hype of stablecoins, he cannot avoid their importance, as banks must get into them to stay competitive.
Open-minded but critical, Dimon said in the post-earnings conference: “We’re going to be involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and stablecoins to understand it, to be good at it”. He further added, “I think they are real, but I don’t know why you’d want to [use a] stablecoin as opposed to just payment”.
Stablecoin adoption has led to their deep integration into crypto exchanges, DeFi platforms, institutional finance, and payments and remittances. Ripple has recently issued its own stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), whereas global tech company Stripe launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin product, Stablecoin Financial Accounts, allowing businesses to hold, send, transfer, and manage stablecoins outside the US.
