Following Ripple Labs’ $250 million takeover of crypto custodian Metaco, banking conglomerate Citigroup is reportedly in the process of looking for a replacement for the Swiss company.
According to anonymous sources, the financial giant is already engaging in talks with several organizations to store digital assets, despite their earlier June 2022 agreement to partner with Metaco and launch the cryptocurrency portfolio platform, Harmonize.
The conglomerate, which has 200 million customer accounts and does business in 160 countries and jurisdictions, has yet to confirm any potential departures from Metaco are linked to Ripple’s takeover.
Metaco, founded in 2015, supplies enterprise-grade solutions for interacting with digital assets, and their Harmonize platform is already being employed by financial institutions such as Societe Generale, BBVA, DBS, UnionBank, BNP Paribas, DekaBank and DZ Bank.
Citigroup announced the launch of a cryptocurrency-focused division aimed at institutional clients with plans to hire 100 specialists in November 2021, and followed this up with job openings for DeFi and CBDC risk managers in August 2022.
