Citigroup, JPMorgan lead TradFi titans’ Web3 pivot: Ripple

Giants from the international traditional banking sector have increasingly brought their focus towards blockchain and Web3 exploration between 2020 and 2024. A recent report by Ripple claimed that Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are among banking titans that have marked their participation in several blockchain-related fundings over the last few years.

Titled “Banking on Digital Assets”, the report is collectively been compiled by Ripple, CB Insights, and the UK Centre for Blockchain Technologies. It highlights how global banks have poured in investments to support Web3 experiments within the mentioned period.

As per the findings, a total of 106 blockchain firms have secured investments from Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). These banks, based on their sizes and interconnectedness among other factors, are considered significantly crucial to the global financial system and their failure are projected to have the power to trigger large-scale financial crisis on a global level.

Initiatives around crypto custody, tokenization, payment solutions, and revamping the existing trading infrastructure managed to garner most attention from these banks. Brazil’s CloudWalk, for instance, reportedly bagged $750 million in funding with support from Banco Itaú. Germany’s Solaris, meanwhile, secured more than $100 million from Japan’s SBI Group in a Series G funding round earlier this year.

Between 2020 and 2024, traditional banking mammoths contributed to 33 deals to Web3 projects with their valuations hitting $100 million or more.

“We found that G-SIBS commonly partnered with other banks to jointly invest in blockchain companies, instead of investing independently. We also found that this sector preferred partnerships-largely with crypto exchanges and investments over full acquisitions,” the report said, adding that this kind of a calculated approach lets banks explore emerging sectors without having to shell out a lot on large-scale purchases.

With 18 Web3 investment deals each — Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are banks with the highest exposure to blockchain projects, the report said. JPMorgan Chase and Mitsubishi UFJ, meanwhile, have 15 investments each in blockchain-related firms.

“Movement into the blockchain space by G-SIBS helps legitimize the technology, signalling that real-world applications have matured enough to be put into practice, certain use cases are both scalable and commercially viable, and digital asset regulation is progressing,” the report said.

In the coming times, stablecoin transactions that already hit around $700 billion in quarterly transactions in the first quarter of 2025 according to Citigroup numbers, are projected to grow now that the U.S. has passed the GENIUS Act into a law.

The report further projected that banks like JPMorgan Chase and others will continue to explore blockchain offerings like asset tokenization to their global clients.