Citi, Goldman, other global banks and asset managers team up on stablecoin venture

The consortium, which includes Citi, Goldman Sachs and other unnamed global banks and asset managers, is organizing a joint venture aimed at issuing a bank-backed stablecoin. The initial focus is a U.S. dollar token built for payments and digital-asset settlement — the two use cases that have driven most of the growth in stablecoin transaction volume over the past two years. A euro-denominated stablecoin has been flagged as a near-term expansion priority, suggesting the group intends to build out a multi-currency settlement rail rather than a single-token product.

This move follows a broader pattern of major banks exploring tokenized deposits and stablecoin rails since 2023, as non-bank issuers like Tether and Circle came to dominate the market with USDT and USDC. Regulatory clarity in the U.S. around stablecoin issuance has improved markedly over the past year, removing much of the legal ambiguity that previously kept large depository institutions on the sidelines. Banks have watched billions of dollars in settlement volume migrate to crypto-native rails without earning a cut of the float income or transaction fees, and this venture appears to be a direct response to that leakage.

For Goldman Sachs, which reported $58.3 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025 (up 8.9% year over year) with a 29.5% net margin and $51.32 in diluted EPS, a stablecoin venture would sit alongside its existing digital assets and transaction banking businesses. The mechanism at play is straightforward: banks issuing their own stablecoin can capture reserve-asset yield (typically short-term Treasuries) that non-bank issuers currently keep, while also embedding themselves into digital-asset settlement flows that today largely bypass traditional custody and clearing infrastructure. Citi's involvement suggests similar ambitions around its own payments and custody franchise.

Unknown are each bank's ownership stake, the venture's governance structure, and a launch timeline — details that will determine whether this is a serious commercial threat to Circle and Tether or a slower-moving pilot. It's also unclear how reserve assets will be managed, whether the token will be permissioned or available to retail users, and how it will interoperate with existing stablecoin rails. Regulatory sign-off, even under a friendlier framework, is not guaranteed to be swift, and past bank-led consortium efforts in blockchain (from interbank settlement networks to earlier tokenization pilots) have a mixed record of reaching commercial scale.

Investors watching this story should look for the venture's formal name, initial member list and reserve structure, along with any regulatory filings or licensing announcements that would mark a concrete launch date. Circle's public listing gives a market-based read on how the stablecoin sector prices competitive threats, and any material move in Circle's shares or Tether-related headlines following this news would be an early signal of how seriously the market takes bank entry into the space.