Shahmir Khaliq, Head of Services at Citi, on Digital Assets

Citi's Shahmir Khaliq, Head of Services (one of Citi's 5 business lines), just made it explicit: digital assets are no longer an experiment. They are becoming core financial infrastructure.

Key takeaways from Making It Real: Digital Assets.

1️⃣ Digital assets are now a C-suite priority

Focus is shifting to:

- Production-grade infrastructure

- Client use cases

- Commercial viability

👉  In my GTM conversations, counterparts have moved from innovation teams to revenue owners.

2️⃣ Tokenization is about market infrastructure

Tokenization is as much about post-trade and market structure upgrade as it is about bringing assets onchain.

Key benefits:

- Reduced friction in settlement

- Cross-border harmonization

- Improved collateral mobility 

👉 Treat it as infrastructure, you control the flow

3️⃣ Stablecoins & tokenized bank deposits are parallel monetary rails

- Stablecoins are evolving into 24/7 liquidity infrastructure and real-time payment rails

- Bank-issued tokenized deposit may surpass stablecoins in volume

👉 This sets up a the single biggest decision facing banks: own your own money rail or be plugged into others

4️⃣ Institutional adoption is use-case driven

- Payments (treasury, cross-border)

- Collateral management

- Tokenized funds and securities

5️⃣ Coexistence with legacy systems (not replacement)

Shahmir compares digital assets to high-speed rail built alongside existing infrastructure.

Legacy systems will continue operating and gradually integrate with onchain rails.

➡️ Strategic implications

1️⃣ The battleground is infrastructure control

Whoever owns:

- tokenized money rails 

- custody + settlement layer 

→ captures sticky long-term value

2️⃣ Distribution + integration > asset issuance

Issuing tokens is easy but embedding into:

- treasury workflows

- trading systems

- client journeys 

→ is the real business moat

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