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Citibank Working on Its Own Version of Bitcoin

In a report, IBTimes UK, Ken Moore, head of Citi Innovation Labs the bank has been looking at distributed ledger technology for “the last few years” and has amassed a skilled team. The news report from the online portal informs that Citibank claims that they have constructed three blockchain and a test currency to run across them.

Moore was quoted saying that his company has up and running three separate systems within Citi now that actually deploy blockchain distributed ledger technologies. He also informed media professionals that his company is all within the labs just now so there is no real money passing through these systems yet; they are at a pre-production level to be clear.

The website quoted Moore saying:

We also have an equivalent to Bitcoin up and running, again within the labs, so we can mine what we call a ‘Citicoin’, for want of a better term. It’s in the labs, but it’s to make sure we are at the leading edge of this technology and that we can exploit the opportunities within it.

Not Patent Filed Yet

Answering to a question whether the company has filed a patent on the technology behind Citicoin, Moore said that there was no such decision as what they have been doing has been open-source. He remarked that most of their efforts have been focused on payments; trade probably being a second runner.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting turn of events, as a traditional bank has been experimenting with its own cryptocurrency. The decision by Citibank to develop at least three of its own cryptocurrencies based on the same principles as Bitcoin will encourage and prompt other similarly placed banks to take similar activities in their portfolios.

Why not Use Bitcoin?

Interestingly, a lot of questions are now being raised by skeptical who think the concept of Bitcoin in itself is to disrupt traditional banking system. For instance, they ask why Citi would use their own cryptocurrency rather than simply use Bitcoins to make inter-bank transactions, or whatever plans they had for using the cryptocurrencies.

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