Citi abandons ‘Citicoin’ project in face of competition

The banking industry is slowly starting to realize that their blockchain developments are unnecessary. Citigroup has now abandoned their ‘Citicoin’ project, realizing that it didn’t make much sense, reports Coindesk.

The Citicoin crypto was never formally announced, but was in development at an innovation lab in Dublin Ireland. It was intended to streamline global payment processes, much like the recently announced JPM coin from JPMorgan Chase.

Realizing that competition from Bitcoin, JPM coin and SWIFT made another competitor unnecessary, Citi has now stepped back. Gulru Atak, the current innovation lab chief, reportedly said:

“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.”

The challenge of introducing a Citi-branded crypto, competing with the existing and in-development digital currencies, and taking on the SWIFT network, all the while having to convince banks of their superiority, was just too much. Atak added:

“If we are talking about cross border payments, how many banks do we have across the world – and how many of them are already on-boarded on SWIFT? And how long has it taken SWIFT to onboard all those banks?”

Atak also notes that they might have been looking at the problem the wrong way. Banks are trying to apply their legacy solutions to the new world of blockchain technology, and ignoring how those solutions were originally created. SWIFT was made to help solve the problems of international banking, but emulating it on the blockchain ignores the potential of the new technology. He rightly concludes that we have to look at the current issues of the system, and then find new solutions.

That’s where Bitcoin come in, and the strategy of Bitcoin SV (BSV). The entire banking system is riddled with unnecessary transaction costs, and burdened with legacy bureaucracy, making it cumbersome to deal with. By turning to the BSV blockchain, and its strategy of stability, massive scaling and safe, instant transactions, we can revolutionize how the world transacts.

Rather than incrementally improve current banking processes, BSV can be used to create whole new models. Citi was right to step back from the competition, because BSV is already the solution.

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