Close to the heels of BNP Paribas’ acknowledgment of Bitcoin and Blockchain’s potential for causing disruption in various markets, especially the fintech sector, we are now hearing about another financial giant planning to use digital currency for its operations. The New York City based financial giant, Citigroup has recently made it public that the corporation is working on its own digital currency. Named Citicoin, the new digital currency is based on Bitcoin technology and Citigroup has plans of using it for easier, faster and more economical cross border money transfer applications.
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The research and design arm at Citigroup known as Citi Innovation has been instrumental in development of Citicoin. Currently in early testing phase, the Citicoin uses core Blockchain technology for maintaining records of all transactions (just like Bitcoin). Citigroup’s foray into digital currency is not a quick decision. According to Citigroup, they have been keeping their eyes on distributed ledger technology (Blockchain technology) for few years now. They have already developed three Blockchain versions which are now being used to test the new Citicoin.
Bitcoin has definitely grown big enough to be noticed by everyone and those, especially banking and financial institutions can’t afford to ignore the potential of Blockchain technology anymore. Citigroup’s Citicoin and Blockchains are currently confined to an isolated laboratory environment and test transactions involving real money is yet to be started.
Citigroup is not the only financial corporation currently dabbling with digital currency. Many banks across the world have already realized the potential of digital currency and they have integrated Ripple network and Bitcoin network into their operations. Making it more encouraging is the recent report published by Santander group. According to the report, by adopting Blockchain technology, banks will be able to save close to $20 billion by 2022 in infrastructure and compliance costs.
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We can see more banks adopting digital currency technology into their daily operations in the coming days.