U.S. banking giant Citigroup believes that mass adoption is six to eight years away and will be driven by central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the tokenization of financial, gaming and real-world assets.

Citi projected CBDCs to hit a combined market cap of $5 trillion by 2030 in major economies and said that roughly 50% of them would be linked to distributed ledger technology.

Citi noted that CBDCs will allow people to interact and experiment with digital currencies in a relatively secure environment due to state-backing, which is a good thing for the overall adoption of blockchain tech despite most central banks not using it for their CBDCs.