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Could Citibank turn to Ripple after ditching their “Citicoin” project?

chepicap.com 18 March 2019 15:21, UTC

Even though they had been planning it for a long time, Citibank has now cancelled their "Citicoin" project. Much related to the JPM Coin, now it seems as if an opportunity could be preparing for tokens such as Ripple, which could help to solve Citibank's need for a digital asset.

Gulru Atak, global head of innovation at Citi, reflected to Coindesk on some of the causes for the cancellation of the plans for launching their own bank-crypto, which are seemingly related to the negative public reaction and subsequent failure of similar projects such as the JPM Coin:

“Based on our learnings from that experiment we actually decided to make meaningful improvements in the existing rails by leveraging the payments ecosystem and within that ecosystem, we are considering the fintechs as well or the regulators around the world as well, including SWIFT.”

Atak appeared weary on the rhythm of adoption of blockchain and digital assets by banks, mentioning that SWIFT has taken a long time to gain worldwide adoption, and that currently it is sufficiently well spread. The creation of a digital asset has been a plan of Citibank since about 4 years ago, as the first reports suggested back then. As early as 2015, the bank had already developed a test platform.

The directive also suggested that now the bank is looking at other methods to benefit from blockchain and digital assets, but with a shorter-term impact. Here is where Ripple could be useful to bridge the gap left behind by the cancelled Citicoin.

Allegedly, the xRapid and xCurrent systems could very well serve the same needs as the Citicoin, such as speeding internal transactions while lowering costs. However, it seems as if the use of XRP will still have to wait, pretty much because just like SWIFT, its viability is largely determined by its level of adoption.

chepicap.com