This Former Banking Giant CEO Says Banks Will Start Crypto Trading in 3 Years

The former boss of Citigroup Inc., Vikram Pandit predicted that the majority of financial institutions will begin cryptocurrency assets trading in lieu of the decentralized industry’s inevitable growth. Pandit spoke at the Singapore Fintech Festival event and told Bloomberg that the ‘shift’ will be implemented sooner than later, within merely one to three years.

In “one to three years, every large bank and, or securities firm is going to actively think about ‘shouldn’t I also be trading and selling cryptocurrency assets?'”, Pandit told Bloomberg.

Furthermore, Pandit who has invested in decentralized crypto businesses like, Coinbase Inc. and Alchemy Insights Inc. has also emphasized the importance of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), calling them a “big hope”. He noted that Central Banks around the world need to accept and adopt CBDCs if not the decentralized crypto, as economies prepare to step into Web3.

“My big hope is that central banks around the world understand the benefit of a central bank digital currency, and move on to accept, adopt them…a central bank digital currency, which is available to you and me, and every other retail participant around the world,”, Pandit told Bloomberg. He further added that cross-border transactions and the attempt to modernize a paper-based, i.e., the traditional fiat banking system is “cumbersome” and creates a considerable amount of “deadweight” cost.

Central Banks stay divided on CBDC & Crypto stance

While Pandit supports both, decentralized crypto as well as CBDCs, but Central Banks around the world stay divided with only opting for one of these options. Countries like El Salvador, that chose Bitcoin legal tender are performing exceptionally. Not long ago, the Salvadoran President, Nayib Bukele declared the Bitcoin legal tender’s success on Twitter, further announcing that profits from Bitcoin purchases will be sponsoring 20 schools and a hospital in the country. On the other hand, the authoritarian Chinese government completely banned cryptocurrency in the nation but continues to promote its digital Yuan despite a recent CBDC scam in China.