Citigroup’s “Citicoin project”, the bank’s flurry into cryptocurrency & blockchain applications, which is quite similar to JP Morgan’s JPM Coin has been closed down as it was concluded that there were more efficient ways to improve Cross-border payments.

Started in July 2015, Ken Moore of Citi’s Innovation Lab stated that the project initially started just as a proof of concept to look into distributed ledger technology but was never officially announced.

He also said that Citi was running three blockchain distributed ledger technologies with no actual money being passed through the systems. He added that it was equivalent to Bitcoin (cough cough), mining what they called a ‘Citicoin’ and were exploring the possibilities of this technology.

Bottom is in: 2015 CitiBank looks to launch citicoin 2019 JPM launches JPM coin 2019 Citibank scraps Citicoin 2023 JPM scraps JPM coin @pierre_rochard @APompliano https://t.co/gNgxPH3E0W — Bitcoin Litecoin Master ⚡️ (@xtdisnkfe) March 18, 2019

Citi’s current innovation lab chief, Gulru Atak spoke with CoinDesk and said that from their learnings, it was decided to make meaningful improvements to the current payments ecosystem rather than going all-out to build on Blockchain.

She said:

“Citi’s blockchain strategy in recent years has been about finding ways to integrate legacy systems,” citing as one example “the bank’s 2017 partnership with Nasdaq, CitiConnect, designed to streamline payments around private securities,” which she said had similarities to the JPM Coin project.

She also mentions that Citi is no way is giving up on blockchain technology and continue to explore its use in trade finance.

“Our focus is currently more in the trade space and trade finance and trade letters of credit. We are experimenting with this technology but probably we are a little bit, like, reserved when it comes to making bold public announcements.”

Blockmanity’s Take

It’s still a long way to go till Banks adopting Blockchain for practical applications. We are still at the starting stages of the Blockchain revolution and the banks that adapt, rather than follow blindly, will be the front runners.

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