The chairman of The Orogen Group and former CEO of Citigroup, Vikram Pandit, has shared his views on the future of cryptocurrency trading for financial institutions at the Singapore Fintech Festival event with Bloomberg's Haslinda Amin.
According to Pandit, in a couple of years, the majority of large banks or other financial institutions are going to join the cryptocurrency trading industry and will offer their clients exposure to the market.
Traditional financial institutions are currently only exploring ways of entering the digital assets market. The increase in popularity of the industry occurred after Bitcoin's run to $65,000 and approval of the first U.S. Bitcoin ETF.
Alex DovbnyaWhile, in the past, banks were only guessing at whether they wanted to join the rally, today some of them have already started working with digital assets. Goldman Sachs Group is already offering crypto futures trading—since last week. Another example is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which is yet to buy and store cryptocurrency assets.
Pandit's enthusiasm is supported by his own financial decisions since the banker has been actively investing in crypto-related firms like Coinbase and Alchemy Insights. He is hoping that central banks will also join private institutions in terms of adopting digital assets and will work more actively to develop the central bank's digital currencies.
Pandit hopes that digital currencies implementation will modernize the paper-based banking system and make the exchange process more convenient.
Though most countries remain cautious about cryptocurrencies, some of them are already working toward mass adoption. Previously, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.
Alex Dovbnya
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov