Citi и BlackRock: как финансовые гиганты строят инфраструктуру цифровых активов

Executives overseeing digital initiatives at Citi and BlackRock met at Bloomberg Crypto to discuss how the world's largest financial institutions are reshaping their operating models under the influence of decentralized finance technologies.

Who was in the room

Shamir Halik heads Citi's services division — one of the largest clearing and custody businesses in the banking system. Under his leadership are transaction services, asset safekeeping, and payment infrastructure used by corporations, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds worldwide. Citi is among the key pillars of Wall Street's settlement system.

Robert Mitchnik is head of digital assets at BlackRock, which manages over $10 trillion in assets. His team launched iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) — a Bitcoin ETF that attracted over $20 billion in just a few months after its January 2024 launch, becoming one of the fastest-growing exchange-traded funds in the history of the American ETF market.

The presence of two top executives at this level on a single platform sends an unambiguous signal: crypto is no longer a theme for startups and enthusiasts — it is operational reality for the world's largest financial institutions.

Citi: infrastructure over speculation

Over several years, Citi has systematically built infrastructure for institutional crypto. The bank launched Citi Token Services — a deposit tokenization platform that enables corporate clients to conduct payments and settlements 24/7, bypassing delays inherent in traditional correspondent banking systems.

Citi's core focus areas in digital assets:

• Tokenization of trade finance and letters of credit
• Instant settlement between counterparties without intermediary chains
• Integration of smart contracts with corporate treasuries
• Custody services for tokenized securities and real-world assets

For Citi, digital assets are not a speculative market but an infrastructure challenge: ensuring reliability, regulatory compliance, and operational speed where assets exist as tokens on blockchain.

BlackRock: tokenization of traditional markets

BlackRock is following a parallel course. After Bitcoin ETF cemented the company's position in the public crypto market, Mitchnik and his team shifted focus to tokenizing classic financial instruments — bonds, equities, and money market funds.

The flagship product is BUIDL Fund (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) — a tokenized money market fund on the Ethereum blockchain. It provides institutional clients with yields comparable to short-term U.S. government bonds while allowing instant token transfer at any time of day — without waiting for settlement windows typical of traditional instruments.

"Tokenization is not a parallel financial system.

It is the next step in the evolution of markets that already exist," — Robert Mitchnik, BlackRock.

Mitchnik has repeatedly stressed: BlackRock's strategy does not involve creating new speculative asset classes. The goal is to make existing instruments more accessible, liquid, and convenient for operations through blockchain infrastructure.

What this means

The simultaneous appearance of Citi and BlackRock executives at Bloomberg Crypto signals a systemic shift: institutional adoption of digital assets has moved from the pilot stage to scalable operational products.

The two largest traditional finance players are building infrastructure that will serve the next generation of capital markets. The boundary between TradFi and DeFi continues to blur — and increasingly, the driving force behind this process is not startups but banks with centuries of history.