Wall Street Meets Crypto Street: Citi-Coinbase Deal Signals $4 Trillion Stablecoin Future

TL;DR,

• Citigroup and Coinbase are partnering to build a new system for institutional digital asset payments, forecasting stablecoins could support up to $200 trillion in annual transaction volume by 2030.
• Coinbase’s crypto stack plus Citi’s global network enables fiat-to-stablecoin conversion, payment orchestration, and programmable settlement for compliant, enterprise-grade rails.
• Citi forecasts $$–$4.0T stablecoins by 2030 supporting $$–$200T annual transactions; its Coinbase partnership targets institutional digital asset payments infrastructure.

In 2018, we had the ICO boom; in 2022, we had the memecoin hype, but in 2025, we will have the stablecoin hype and institutional adoption fueling the market. Recently, Citigroup and Coinbase announced their official partnership to create a unified system for digital asset payments aimed at institutional clients.

The $4 Trillion Question: Why Banks Can’t Ignore Digital Asset Payments Anymore

According to the official report, the partnership centers around providing the next step for institutional adoption. Bitcoin, through ETFs and Strategy’s “golden” investment portfolio, and stablecoins, through USDT, USDC, RLUSD, and PYUSD, have literally carved out their places in traditional stock investments.

Coinbase brings secure, scalable crypto infrastructure, while Citi brings a payments network spanning 4markets and 300+ clearing systems. The joint venture will be a fintech alliance enabling other institutes in the network to deposit, withdraw, and convert traditional currencies with digital assets and their sophisticated services.

FOLLOW UP: From Concept to Launch: Africa’s Regulated Stablecoin Journey

As Coinbase’s Brian Foster put it,

“By combining their reach with Coinbase’s leadership in digital assets, we’re creating solutions that can simplify and expand access to digital asset payments.”

In the upcoming months, we will share specifics about the new digital asset payment systems, which follow a similar pathway. Stablecoin popularity has surged in Africa, and it has increased even more globally. The GENIUS Act in the U.S. initiated a global trend encouraging companies to diversify into digital assets as a value store. The data clearly demonstrates Coinbase’s aggressive scaling to meet this demand.

Once the world’s trendsetter approved digital assets, understanding how banks use stablecoins and digital assets became essential. The upcoming digital asset payment system is a byproduct seeking to capitalize on the trend. It’s more about creating an enterprise blockchain payment infrastructure that provides enterprise entities with the extra guarantee that their finances are safe and secure. The focus is on payment orchestration and stablecoin settlement, beginning with fiat deposits and withdrawals.

The initiative establishes a foundation for facilitating the growing trend of stablecoin payments by 2025. In fact, Citi’s own research (Stablecoins 2030) has forecasted stablecoin issuance reaching between $1.9 trillion and $4.0 trillion by 2030, potentially supporting $100–200 trillion in annual transaction activity. The analysis suggests that stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and CBDCs will all exist together, with bank tokens possibly becoming more popular than stable volume.

CIDAP, RLN, and Other Acronyms That Spell ‘Future’

Citigroup is among the few financial systems to methodically develop and incorporate blockchain systems. Its most recent exploits include the Citi Integrated Digital Assets Platform (CIDAP), launched in July 2024 by Citi Innovation Labs.

FOLLOW UP: Why Absa Bank Chose Ripple to Secure Its Digital Future

CIDAP is built on Hyperledger Besu and is designed to be blockchain-agnostic, allowing for extensibility. Its main features include enabling token creation, secure storage, and programmable functions for both public and private chains—key components of a business blockchain payment system.

Some of its capabilities include underpinning:

• Citi Token Services for Cash, which shows what CIDAP can do, allows money to move between branches all day and night and works with the USD Clearing system that is always running, making payments to 250 banks in 40 different areas.
• Citi Token Services for Trade, currently in pilot, uses smart contracts for instant payments to service providers, a capability as demonstrated in a Maersk pilot.
• In capital markets, Citi progressed from proofs‑of‑concept to production on Axoni’s equity‑swap platform, executing the first live swap with Goldman Sachs in February 2020—cutting reconciliation cycles by keeping parties on a shared ledger.

Citi also co-developed the Regulated Liability Network (RLN) with SETL and AWS, which completed a proof-of-concept in July 2023. The findings demonstrated feasibility by completing instant dollar settlements using various settlement systems on a shared ledger, including central bank money, commercial bank money, and regulated e-money. While the organization initially used e‑money. Initially focused on programmable liquidity and real-time settlement, the organization steadily shifted towards accelerating institutional crypto adoption.

The platform has also invested strategically, accelerating institutional investment in BVNK in October 2025, a stablecoin‑rail provider processing over $20 billion in annual payments.

FOMO Goes Corporate: Why Banks From Lagos to London Are Racing to Blockchain

While Citi’s approach is top‑down and infrastructure‑focused, other banks are advancing in parallel—often to solve regional pain points:

• Absa (South Africa) partnered with Ripple in October 2025 to launch institutional‑grade crypto custody, addressing security and compliance prerequisites for enterprise clients and advancing regional institutional crypto adoption.
• Standard Chartered teamed with StraitsX to provide cash management and custody for XUSD and XSGD stablecoins, positioning itself as a bridge to stablecoin rails for cross‑border payments and “stablecoin remittance services.”
• Nigeria’s Zone, licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria, added Zenith, First Bank, and UBA to its decentralized payment network in July 2024; NIBSS partnered with Zone in August 2024 for PTSA functions on‑chain. Each bank operates its own node with real‑time settlement—an example of enterprise blockchain payment infrastructure that reduces failure points and processing costs.
• Nedbank is deploying smart‑contract solutions for agriculture finance (6–12 months horizon), targeting trade‑finance processing and farmer‑financing decisions.

Banks today have no option other than to invest strategically in adopting digital asset payments infrastructure or fear missing out on a defining technology. fearing missing defining technology. In Africa alone, stablecoins accounted for 43% of total crypto transaction volume. Keep in mind that the figures mentioned only represent retail investors, payments, and P2P trading; institutions have not yet participated. However, the industry is already gearing to accept such changes, i.e., ABC, Africa’s first Bitcoin treasury company.

What to watch next?

Citi says they will unveil more details on specific features in the upcoming month, but they have already laid the groundwork. The platform’s regulatory expertise, global network, and institutional relationships, combined with Coinbase’s technical proficiency in digital assets, create a template from niche use cases to mainstream institutional infrastructure.