Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Martin Chavez announced yesterday at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco that Goldman Sachs has no intention of abandoning plans to launch a cryptocurrency desk. Chavez labeled contradicting reports circling most media outlets yesterday as “fake news”.
“I never thought I would hear myself use this term but I really have to describe that news as fake news,” said Chavez.
The cryptocurrency world has been in a state of panic over the last 48 hours, sparked by sharp market downturns and reports that New York-based multinational investment bank, Goldman Sachs, had decided to scrap its plans to launch its own cryptocurrency trading desk. However, bank CFO Martin Chavez has announced that Goldman remains deeply interested in creating foyers into the digital currency market.
After waving off yesterday’s FUD, Chavez described Goldman’s continued interest in developing a type of derivative for Bitcoin.
“Clients want it,” Chavez said. “The next stage of the exploration is what we call non-deliverable forwards, these are over the counter derivatives, they’re settled in U.S. dollars and the reference price is the bitcoin-U.S. dollar price established by a set of exchanges.”
CNBC reports that Goldman Sachs has been clearing Bitcoin-linked futures contracts offered by the CBOE and CME since May and is providing clients with liquidity for those futures. However, there is still no clear timeline for the bank’s future involvement in the space.
“When we talked about exploring digital assets that it was going to be exploration that would be evolving over time,” Chavez said. “Maybe someone who was thinking about our activities here got very excited that we would be making markets as principal and physical bitcoin, and as they got into it they realized part of the evolution, but it’s not here yet.”
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Was the Market Crash a Byproduct of the Goldman Sachs News?
As reported yesterday by Unhashed, despite the panic surrounding Goldman, recent market downturns are more likely due to a massive billion dollar sell-off driven by numerous wallets known to be linked to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht’s associates have reportedly moved $110 million dollars worth Bitcoin onto Bitfinex and Binance, while over 100,000 more Bitcoin continue to be on the move through unknown channels.
Business Insider reported yesterday that Goldman Sachs may be attempting to refocus its energies towards offering cryptocurrency custodial services. Similar to Coinbase Custody, the new banking branch would offer a series of products aimed at attracting large institutional investors. A company spokesman said yesterday, “At this point, we have not reached a conclusion on the scope of our digital asset offering.”
“Physical bitcoin is something tremendously interesting, and tremendously challenging,” Chavez added. “From the perspective of custody, we don’t yet see an institutional-grade custodial solution for bitcoin, we’re interested in having that exist and it’s a long road.”
While it is frustrating that the timeline for virtually all of Goldman Sachs’ crypto-related services remains a mystery, cryptocurrency enthusiasts may take some solace in knowing that Wall Street’s interest in crypto is far from waning. Indeed, with the growing likelihood that Bitcoin ETFs will approved within the next year and reports that Nasdaq could be launching its own cryptocurrency trading desk as early as Q2 of 2019, coin traders may have a great deal to look forward to in the coming months.
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