Much of the speculation and propaganda has spread on Sachs Goldman’ stance on much-hyped plans to launch a Bitcoin Trading Desk. These speculations came to light, especially after a report by Business Insider announced that Goldman Sachs was deprioritizing its near-term plans to launch a Bitcoin Trading Desk to allow it to fully focus on a key business that will drive Wall Street investment in crypto assets.
“Fake news”
However, while addressing a summit at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer Martin Chavez sought to set the record straight regarding the matter. He categorically described the report, which stated that the Wall Street Investment Bank was quietly abandoning its Bitcoin Trading Desk project before it even stated it as “Fake news”.
“I never thought I would hear myself use this term, but I really have to describe that as fake news, “stated Chavez. He went further to state that the bank was working on a derivative for Bitcoin’, a type in which clients want. “The next stage of exploration is what we call non-derivable forwards, these are over-the-counter derivatives, they are settled in U.S. dollars and the reference price is the Bitcoin-American Dollar prices are established by a set of exchanges,” he explained.
Addressing clients’ interests in Digital Currency
There has been an ever increasing number of clients who are interested in digital currencies, and the Street Wall giant is looking for just how best it can address the need. However, it’s something that needs to be looked into in depth as it is evolving over time, at least according to Chavez. “When we talked about exploring digital assets, it was an exploration that would be evolving over time,” Chavez stated.
Chavez was seeking to clear doubts on the bank’s backing out plans while at the same time addressing the fact that such plans have no specific timeframes. “ Maybe someone who was thinking about our activities here got very excited that we would be making markets as a principle and physical Bitcoin, and as they got into it they realized part of the evolution, but it’s not here yet,” he explained.
Much as Goldman Sachs has been providing clearing solutions since May for Bitcoin-linked futures contracts offered by CME and CBOE, it’s yet to establish a platform for physical Bitcoin transactions. “Physical Bitcoin is something tremendously interesting and tremendously challenging. 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.” Chavez said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/goldman-sachs-cfo-calls-reports-of-shutting-down-crypto-desk-fake-news.html
https://www.ccn.com/fake-news-cfo-says-goldman-sachs-is-not-ditching-bitcoin-trading-desk/
