But with the Trump administration’s embrace of crypto and the passage of the Genius Act in July, which established regulation for stablecoins, Korenyuk says this time is different. “Blockchain is here to stay,” he tells Fortune. The question, he added, is how it will be used.
Citi has long been a pioneer in the space, including through its Citi Token Services program, which uses a private blockchain to facilitate 24/7 payments between institutional Citi customers. While this is a more limited use case, especially because it doesn’t utilize the permissionless and decentralized innovations of Bitcoin, Korenyuk says it proves that crypto’s distributed ledger technology can change payment rails through programmability. For example, financial markets have separate systems for different types of assets, such as cash, securities, and debt, while tokens and smart contracts on blockchains “follow the same architecture, creating economies of scale and efficiencies,” Korenyuk says.
