Citi Launches Tokenization Service for Private Company Equity
Alina Collins
Citi has launched a blockchain-based service letting wealthy and institutional clients hold and trade private-company shares via tokenized depositary receipts — managed right alongside public stocks. This means the wall between private and public markets is being lowered by a major bank, not a crypto startup.
What exactly is this service?
Citi's core product is a tokenized depositary receipt — a digital token on a blockchain that represents ownership in a private company, tradable like a regular security.
Citi digital-assets head Artem Korenyuk put it plainly: clients can place private-company equity "right next to Apple stock" in the same portfolio view.
This means → private shares stop being a separate, hard-to-manage asset class and get pulled into the securities-account system clients already know.
How does the plumbing work?
Citi acts as both issuer and custodian — it wraps private equity into depositary receipts, then puts them on-chain.
The blockchain infrastructure is run by Switzerland's SIX (operator of the Swiss stock exchange). Citi says it may expand to other chains later.
In plain terms = Citi handles "packaging" and "safekeeping," SIX handles the "ledger," and the investor just uses Citi's interface.
Why not just buy private shares the old way?
The traditional route runs through a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) — a shell entity set up solely to hold one company's shares.
Korenyuk was blunt about the problem: under SPVs, "investors don't really know what they're buying."
This means → the real selling point of tokenized receipts is not "blockchain" itself — it is transparency. Investors can see exactly which company's equity they hold and how much.
Who can access it? What are the limits?
The service is currently open only to non-U.S. investors, charging transaction and maintenance fees. Citi plans to extend access to U.S. clients later.
The first trade is already done: a Citi Wealth client invested in Kaleido, an institutional tokenization and digital-assets platform.
Citi also says the infrastructure is open for other banks to plug into — it is not a Citi-only system.
What does this signal about banking's direction?
The backdrop: IPO expectations for marquee names like SpaceX and Anthropic keep drawing institutional money toward private markets, but access channels remain limited.
Citi is in talks with several large private companies to bring them onto the platform.
This reflects a broader industry shift: Citi, JPMorgan, and peers are accelerating blockchain adoption — earlier reports flagged plans for tokenized deposit systems, tokenized money-market funds, and tokenized securities platforms. In plain terms = blockchain is no longer a crypto-native story; traditional banks are turning it into their own infrastructure.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.