Consensus Conference 2026》Citibank: Single-bank tokenization will hardly become the climate; cross-bank standards must be established

Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase emphasized at the Consensus conference that tokenized assets need to have cross-bank interoperability to solve financial silos, and the industry is shifting toward building shared infrastructure to improve efficiency.

Breaking free from siloed challenges, corporate clients pursue cross-bank interoperability

At the Consensus 2026 conference held in Miami, traditional financial institutions demonstrated a more pragmatic perspective on digital asset deployment. Ryan Rugg, Head of Digital Assets at Citigroup, pointed out that if tokenized currencies are limited to a single bank’s closed system, their impact will be very limited.

Large corporate clients have extremely complex financial management structures, often managing hundreds or even thousands of accounts worldwide, dispersed across multiple banks. For these companies, the ease of moving funds between different networks is far more important than the technical solutions offered by a single bank.

Ryan Rugg emphasized that what clients truly need is a solution with multi-bank collaboration features. If each bank acts independently, merely transferring traditional financial silos onto the blockchain, the efficiency pain points of cross-bank payments are not addressed.

Current market consensus shows that corporate clients have a strong demand for real-time, 24/7 payment systems that can operate across banks. This interoperability is the key to scaling tokenized funds.

Image source: 《CoinDesk》Citigroup Head of Digital Assets Ryan Rugg

From pilot to production, validating the feasibility of trillion-dollar transaction volumes

Although fragmentation issues remain to be solved, Wall Street banks have made significant progress in tokenization technology. Citigroup revealed that its tokenized deposit system has experienced rapid growth over the past year. Initially handling only millions of dollars, it has now entered a daily clearing scale of billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan’s progress is equally impressive. Its blockchain platform Kinexys has processed over $1 trillion in transactions, signifying that blockchain technology has shifted from experimental pilots to supporting real business infrastructure.

Kara Kennedy, Head of Market Development at JPMorgan, stated that the current focus is on seamlessly integrating blockchain technology into existing market frameworks, avoiding the creation of entirely isolated parallel systems.

This integration model allows financial institutions to provide 24/7 liquidity management services within their existing clearing and settlement frameworks, greatly enhancing liquidity flexibility.

Redefining financial infrastructure, shared industry-level goals emerge

The current challenge facing tokenized finance is overly fragmented infrastructure. Many banks, fintech companies, and blockchain projects are building their own networks using different standards. Ryan Rugg believes this decentralized development could lead to the recurrence of inefficiencies blockchain originally aimed to solve. To achieve true scale, the financial industry needs to establish shared infrastructure “built by the industry, for the industry.”

She cites the SWIFT global messaging network as an example, highlighting the importance of standardization and shared platforms for global fund flows. Meanwhile, the DTCC, responsible for core clearing in the U.S. market, is actively participating in this transformation.

Nadine Chakar, Head of Digital Assets at DTCC, mentioned that the organization is gradually migrating its securities infrastructure, valued at up to $150 trillion, to a digital layer. This evolution aims to optimize the “pipelines” of the financial system, making collateral management, cross-border payments, and liquidity scheduling more real-time and transparent.

Seeking evolution amid stability, regulation compliance, and the value of intermediaries

Behind technological development, regulatory compliance and risk management remain the most critical defenses on Wall Street. Ryan Rugg clearly stated that regulated large banks must ensure their legal frameworks are 100% complete before launching any new products. This explains why the current push for tokenized finance mainly focuses on optimizing existing channels.

Nadine Chakar emphasized that even though blockchain has decentralized features, functions such as risk management, compliance audits, and settlement guarantees still require professional intermediaries to execute.

Although Evan Auyang, President of Animoca Brands, believes blockchain has the potential to transform industries—such as shortening loan approval times from weeks to days—he also admits that fully native on-chain markets still need time to mature. Currently, traditional finance and decentralized finance are in a phase of convergence. As efficiency gains and cost reductions are recognized by more institutions, tokenization technology will continue to permeate every corner of the financial system.