Citadel Securities Makes a Play for Crypto Trading After Years of Skepticism

Once calling crypto a “jihadist call” against the U.S. dollar, Ken Griffin now appears to have embraced the industry after years of skepticism.

Griffin is steering his market-making giant Citadel Securities into crypto trading, ending years of resistance to the digital asset class. 

The billionaire first hinted at these plans at the 2025 UBS Financial Services Conference on Feb. 11, with Bloomberg reporting Monday that the firm aims to act as a market maker on Coinbase, Binance, and Crypto.com, citing sources.

Citadel Securities, which processes $503 billion in daily trades, accounting for nearly 35% of all U.S. stock trading volume, is reportedly seeking to establish teams outside the U.S., per the report.

Despite the apparent embrace, Griffin has maintained a degree of skepticism about crypto’s fundamental value proposition.

In December last year, he pointedly responded to an interview with Fortune on why crypto was “exploding” at the time, asking: “What I don’t care for about crypto is, what problem does it solve for our economy?”

Citadel’s crypto push follows Trump’s pro-crypto orders and Hester Peirce’s appointment to lead a crypto task force—moves Griffin welcomed this week while calling the former Biden administration’s “regulation by enforcement” approach “evil.”

“We’ve seen time and time again in markets where your tier one players are allowed to participate are actually markets that clean themselves up,” Griffin said in a recent interview with the South Florida Business Journal. “So I’d like to see that happen in the cryptocurrency space.”

Citadel’s entry would mark a watershed moment for institutional crypto participation, coming several years after competitors Jane Street and Jump Trading established digital asset operations of their own in 2017 and 2021 respectively.

The firm previously collaborated with Charles Schwab and Fidelity to launch EDX Markets in 2023, operating an institutional-only crypto exchange designed to mirror traditional financial market structures.

Citadel Securities did not immediately return Decrypt’s requests for additional comment.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair