Goldman Sachs To Offer Bitcoin Derivatives Trading For Selected Clients

Goldman Sachs, the global investment banking behemoth, will soon start rolling out a Bitcoin [BTC] derivatives trading facility, and has been working with a small number of selected clients to trade the product actively, The Block reported on October 30, 2018.

Goldman Sachs Taking On Clients For Trading Bitcoin Derivatives

Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe New York investment bank, has been one of the first major financial institutions to announce plans or a trading desk created specifically for cryptocurrencies.

Dubbed the darling of the cryptocurrency world, the bank had many observers and investors waiting for it to make a big splash into the market. However, it seems that the company is not in any rush to roll out new tradable products tied to the market.

According to a report published by The Block, Goldman Sachs has been working with a small number of clients to trade the product actively and is currently researching ways to implement custody of the cryptocurrency for its customers.

The news about a digital asset derivatives trading had been stirring since October 2017 when the Wall Street Journal first reported the investment banking giant might have intentions of launching a bitcoin trading operation.

On August 6, 2018, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said it would be “too arrogant” to dismiss the possibility of cryptocurrency gaining public adoption as a common medium of payment.

“Goldman Sachs, as far as I know, unless nobody told me, has no bitcoin. But, if it does work out, I could give you the historical path why that could happen, have happened. And so, I’m not in the school of saying, ‘Gee – because it’s uncomfortable with me, because it’s unfamiliar: This can’t happen.’ That’s too arrogant,” Blankfein said during an interview with the Economic Club of New York.

False Reports, Competition, and a Lack of Interest

The Block’s report about Goldman Sachs comes just hours after JP Morgan decided to tokenize Quorum, their Ethereum [ETH] based blockchain.

The global banking giant has also fallen victim to false reports, with Abacus Journal reporting on October 25 that Goldman Sachs had been actively working on the creation of a non-deliverable forward to ether.

However, a source closely following Goldman Sachs’ operations told The Block that the bank was not planning to introduce any derivatives product for ether anytime soon.

Meanwhile, sources familiar with Goldman Sachs’ internal operations have said that the bank’s customers are not looking for any new crypto-related products at this time.

According to Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, an American global investment management firm with over $6.2 trillion of assets under management, the demand for crypto-related futures might not be as high as initially thought.

“I don’t believe any client has sought out crypto exposure. I’ve not heard from one client who says, ‘I need to be in this.’,” he said back in July 2018.