The world's largest bank, Citibank (C), has chosen the Swiss cryptocurrency custody company Metaco to expand its ability to store digital assets. According to a statement released on Wednesday by the two companies, Citi, which is in charge of roughly $27 trillion in assets, plans to fully integrate Metaco's "Harmonize" crypto custody platform. A bank representative pointed out via email that the announcement concerns Citi's Securities Services team, so for the time being, the emphasis will be on things like tokenized securities: representations of stocks and bonds moved around and settled using blockchain technology. Citi offers trading in bitcoin (BTC) futures, similar to Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan (JPM), and in November of last year, the bank disclosed plans to hire 100 staffers to strengthen a digital assets division for institutional clients. “We are witnessing the increasing digitization of traditional investment assets along with new native digital assets. We are innovating and developing new capabilities to support digital asset classes that are becoming increasingly relevant to our clients,” said Okan Pekin, Global Head of Securities Services at Citi in a statement.
Metaco has provided crypto custody plumbing for a number of banks, including Spain’s BBVA (BME) and GazpromBank (Switzerland). The Swiss technology firm is also working with the digital asset division of IBM, a favorite infrastructure provider for most of the world’s banks.