Goldman Sachs, a dominant global investment bank for trading fixed income and equities, had been mulling the creation of a bitcoin trading desk since at least 2017.
Under CEO David Solomon, Goldman has said it is seeking to broaden its market presence by “selectively onboarding” crypto trading institutions to expand offerings.
Banks, including Goldman and rival Morgan Stanley, had announced plans to offer bitcoin investments to rich clients in their wealth management divisions but have mostly stayed away from the volatile asset in their Wall Street trading operations.
The derivatives Goldman traded, bitcoin futures and nondeliverable forwards, are ways to wager on the price of bitcoin.
I am pleased to announce the formation of the firm’s cryptocurrency trading team, which will be our centralized desk for managing cryptocurrency risk for our clients.
As part of our initial launch, we have successfully executed Bitcoin NDFs and CME BTC future trades on a principal basis, all cash settling.
In addition, yesterday we launched our Digital Assets dashboard which provides daily and intraday cryptocurrency market data and news to our clients.