Goldman Sachs reopening Bitcoin trading desk, looking at ETF: Report

Major United States investment bank Goldman Sachs appears to be planning to get back into the Bitcoin business. 

According to a March. 1 Reuters report, a person familiar with the situation said that Goldman Sachs will soon restart its Bitcoin futures trading desk, first proposed and then cancelled in 2018. The financial giant is expected to offer the futures and non-deliverable forwards for clients from next week.

The move comes after the head of the bank’s Investment Strategy Unit said last month that Bitcoin is too volatile to be a store of value and argued that “something with a long-term volatility of 80% can’t be considered a medium of exchange.”

Goldman Sachs may also want to capitalize on Bitcoin’s growing adoption in another way. According to Reuters, “the bank is also exploring the potential for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund and has issued a request for information to explore digital asset custody.”

ETF proposals are booming right now. Just today, the CBOE asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to trade VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF—which the SEC has yet to approve.

Bitcoin is gaining worldwide recognition by major financial services firms and institutional investors, with new investments recently helping it briefly reach a $1 trillion market cap. In a report published yesterday, major American investment bank Citi suggested that Bitcoin is at a “tipping point” that could lead either to mainstream acceptance or a “speculative implosion.”

Many argue that institutional investor participation is what sets the latest Bitcoin bull run apart from the previous one. Just in the first months of this year, Bitcoin has already seen adoption by United States’ oldest bank, BNY Mellon, payment processing giants Mastercard and Visa, and major investors ranging from Tesla and Mass Mutual Insurance and MicroStrategy.

As Modern Consensus reported in late January, $8.7 trillion BlackRock informed regulators that two of its funds are open to investing in Bitcoin futures. The company’s chief investment officer of global fixed income Rick Rieder admitted that the asset manager already “started to dabble in” Bitcoin and explained that it is appreciating because people are looking for storehouses of value.