Citi's Digital Depositary Receipts let wealthy clients buy private-company stakes via blockchain. The first transaction involved Kaleido. Robinhood offers similar products in Europe.
Citigroup rolled out a product called Digital Depositary Receipts on Tuesday, giving its affluent and institutional clients a way to buy into private companies through blockchain-recorded securities that the bank itself issues and holds.
The structure mirrors depositary receipts, a decades-old instrument banks use to let investors hold exposure to foreign shares. Citi adapted the model for private markets: the bank issues a digital receipt recorded on blockchain infrastructure run by SIX, the Swiss market operator. Investors hold the receipt rather than the underlying equity. Citi serves as both issuer and custodian.
The first transaction involved Kaleido, a tokenization firm backed by Citi Ventures and wealth management clients at the bank.
“Our focus with Digital Depositary Receipts is to continue to expand responsible access to digital asset markets,” a Citi spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.
Citi is also in discussions with some of the world's largest private companies about joining the platform directly, according to Yahoo Finance.
The product enters a market where demand for private-company stakes has grown sharply. With some big firms delaying IPOs, investors are looking for alternative routes into companies that may not trade publicly in the near term.
Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) already sells tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX to its European users. Republic also offers blockchain-based tokens that track private company equity, Yahoo Finance reported.
The wider tokenized-asset push is accelerating across major banks. Earlier this month, Citi joined several of the largest U.S. lenders in a plan to build a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, targeting a mid-2027 launch. That system would convert conventional bank deposits into blockchain tokens while keeping funds inside the regulated banking system.
Citi has been positioning for this shift since at least 2023, when it forecast the tokenized securities market could hit $4 trillion by 2030, calling it the potential “killer use-case” for blockchain technology. That same year, Citi ran an initial pilot of its Token Services product, converting customer deposits into digital tokens on a private blockchain for near-instant transfers.
Citi has said it plans to expand to more public blockchains over time. For now, the Digital Depositary Receipts run purely on SIX's private infrastructure. That could eventually open access beyond its current wealthy and institutional client base.
Citigroup shares have climbed about 70% over the past 12 months to trade around $133.38.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.