Citi has launched a blockchain platform aimed at trading private-company shares, signaling a new institutional push into tokenized market infrastructure.

Citi has launched a blockchain platform for trading private-company shares, becoming the first global financial services firm to both issue and act as custodian for tokenized depositary receipts representing private companies.

The bank announced the launch of Digital Depositary Receipts on private shares on June 11, 2026. The product tokenizes private shares on regulated blockchain infrastructure operated by SIX Digital Exchange, with Citi handling settlement and safekeeping of the tokenized receipts.

The inaugural live transaction involved Kaleido and investors within Citi Wealth, supported by Citi’s Secondary Private Markets business. The deal marked the first real-world use of the platform after months of development.

From partnership announcement to live product

Citi and SIX Digital Exchange first announced their partnership on May 6, 2025, targeting a third-quarter 2025 rollout for tokenized late-stage pre-IPO equities on SDX’s digital central securities depository platform. The launch came later than that initial timeline but delivered on the core product vision.

SDX operates under FINMA oversight in Switzerland, giving the platform a regulated foundation that distinguishes it from many crypto-native tokenization experiments. Citi’s dual role as both issuer and custodian consolidates functions that are typically split across multiple intermediaries in private markets.

Private-company shares have long been among the least liquid corners of capital markets. Transfers are slow, recordkeeping is fragmented, and price discovery is limited compared to public equities. A blockchain-based depositary receipt system could streamline ownership transfers and reduce settlement friction, though the actual liquidity improvement will depend on how broadly the platform attracts buyers and sellers.

Citi’s broader tokenization infrastructure

The Digital Depositary Receipts product sits within Citi’s wider digital-assets strategy. The bank’s CIDAP platform powers issuance, transfer, custody, and programmability of tokenized assets across both public and private blockchains, positioning the depositary receipts as one product within a larger infrastructure stack.

The launch arrives during a period of subdued crypto-market sentiment, with Bitcoin  BTC +0.00% trading at $62,870 and the Fear & Greed Index sitting at 12, deep in “Extreme Fear” territory. Recent days have also seen pressure across digital-asset products, with spot Bitcoin ETFs posting $19.03 million in net outflows on June 11.

Yet Citi’s move signals that institutional commitment to tokenization infrastructure is advancing independently of short-term crypto price action. The focus on private-company shares, rather than cryptocurrency trading, positions the platform as capital-markets infrastructure that happens to use blockchain rails.

What the Citi launch signals for institutional tokenization

Major banks have been exploring tokenized assets for years, but most efforts have remained at the pilot or proof-of-concept stage. Citi completing a live transaction with real investors and a real company crosses a threshold that separates experimentation from production deployment.

The choice of private-company shares as the first asset class is deliberate. These securities sit in a segment where blockchain’s advantages in recordkeeping and transfer efficiency address genuine pain points, unlike public equities where existing infrastructure already provides near-instant settlement.

According to unconfirmed reports, the platform is initially available to foreign investors and may later expand to U.S. clients. Separately, Citi reportedly intends the model to be adoptable by other banks and charges transaction and maintenance fees, though these details have not been confirmed by official sources.

The broader tokenized real-world asset sector continues to see institutional entrants. Alongside Citi’s private-share platform, other corners of the digital-asset market are evolving as well; new yield vault products from Ethena and Coinbase reflect growing institutional interest in on-chain financial infrastructure, while segments like NFT-focused platforms face contraction as capital rotates toward tokenization use cases with clearer institutional demand.

Citi stated that future extensions of its digital-assets infrastructure may span both traditional and digital market systems across multiple blockchain networks, suggesting the depositary receipts launch is a starting point rather than a standalone product.