The management of the investment bank Goldman Sachs continues to closely monitor the development of the crypto market.
GS CEO David Solomon touched on the issue of digital assets during the bank’s conference on the organization’s earnings report this week. In his opinion, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have a huge potential for serious changes in the world of finance in the foreseeable future. Let’s talk about the bankers’ point of view in more detail.
To begin with, let’s clarify that Goldman Sachs and its employees were not always positive about Bitcoin. In particular, in May 2020, representatives of the bank stated that BTC, in principle, is not a separate class of asset, therefore, it is allegedly not worth considering the cryptocurrency seriously.
In early 2021, former CEO Lloyd Blankfein also criticized blockchain assets. He stated that the first cryptocurrency is unlikely to withstand the pressure of financial regulators, as a result of which the pace of its development will greatly decrease. This will supposedly also affect the value of the asset, which will not be able to increase as quickly as it did before. However, since then, BTC has already doubled, so the forecast can be considered a failure.
However, the current representatives of Goldman Sachs take coins much more seriously. This was proved by the head of the bank, David Solomon.
Goldman Sachs’ relationship to Bitcoin
Here is one of Solomon’s quotes on this subject, in which the expert shares his attitude to what is happening. The cue is from Decrypt.
As these areas – cryptocurrencies, blockchain and digital money – evolve, there will be significant changes in the way money moves around the world. Also, much attention is paid to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, where the trajectory of development is less clear, since market participants have not yet fully appreciated their properties as a store of value.
That is, the representative of Goldman Sachs suggests that the world has yet to realize all the advantages of cryptocurrencies in the face of Bitcoin and other coins. Indeed, as of today, only a few have managed to understand the prospects that the world of blockchain assets opens up.
The CEO’s comment is almost the same as what he said earlier this month: The bank’s customers are interested in Bitcoin, but clearer government regulation is needed for it to act as an intermediary for their crypto transactions. This means Goldman Sachs is closely monitoring the digital asset market.
He plans to offer Bitcoin investment products to his clients, but US crypto regulation is slowing things down. The expert continues.
Of course, we need to act within the current regulatory requirements. For example, we cannot own or trade bitcoins as a principal.
In addition to Goldman Sachs, the WallStreetBets community on Reddit has begun to show significant interest in the crypto market. As a reminder, earlier this year, this subreddit played a key role in the historic jump in GameStop’s stock price.
Now the administrators of the thematic section of the forum are allowed to openly discuss cryptocurrencies in their community. Previously, WSBs were primarily focused on the stock market and had a relatively negative attitude towards the crypto market – at least all talk about coins was suppressed. Here is a quote from a moderator under the pseudonym bawse1 on this matter.
I see no reason to postpone the inevitable any longer, since cryptocurrencies are not going anywhere. After much deliberation, we decided to only allow discussion of BTC, ETH and DOGE.
By the way, altcoin DOGE was included in this list due to its rapid growth in the first quarter of this year. Altcoin owes its first jump in price to Elon Musk, who actively tweeted about the coin a couple of months ago. This is not the end of the story – after consolidating for a couple of weeks, the DOGE price crawled up again and reached a historic high at $ 0.285 today.
As a result, the cryptocurrency was in eighth place in the overall coin rating.
We believe that this position of bankers is important for the entire cryptocurrency industry. It proves how quickly critics’ views on blockchain assets can change, because just a year ago, Bitcoin was not even an asset class in their eyes. And now, company representatives are ready to offer coin investments to their customers and connect with the niche.
Judging by the current pace of development of the cryptocurrency industry, Goldman Sachs will definitely not be the last bank to receive «backing» coins. So we are waiting for other giants to join the race.
