A recent research newsletter released by banking giant, Goldman Sachs, has revealed that Bitcoin is now considered an investable asset. This newsletter comes alongside the bank’s announcement of their plans to step into the crypto space. Earlier this month, the banking giant revealed that it had executed its first crypto trade through its much anticipated trading desk.

The newsletter included comments from various Goldman Sachs members, including Matthew McDermott, Global Head of Digital Assets, who expressed the company’s bullish views on Bitcoin:

“Bitcoin is now considered an investable asset. It has its own idiosyncratic risk, partly because it’s still relatively new and going through an adoption phase. And it doesn’t behave as one would intuitively expect relative to other assets given the analogy to digital gold; to date, it’s tended to be more aligned with risk-on assets,” said McDermott.

Adding that: “Clients and beyond are largely treating it as a new asset class, which is notable — it’s not often that we get to witness the emergence of a new asset class.”

Even though the banking giant has only recently started to offer their clients access to the crypto space, it seems that they have big plans for the future:

“To help facilitate client transactions, we expect to trade the bitcoin CME future and certain pre-agreed upon bitcoin-linked securities on a principal basis in the near future. From a prime brokerage perspective, we plan to offer clients the ability to go synthetically long/short bitcoin-linked securities and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) in Europe,” said McDermott.

McDermott also mentioned that the banking giant is also analysing how they could offer lending structures in the crypto space: “We’re also looking into offering lending structures in and around the crypto space to corporate clients as well as structured notes.”

Goldman Sachs appears to be trying to stay one step ahead of their competitors, as a number of other financial giants are also offering crypto services, including the likes of JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and BNY Mellon.

Article by: Andrew Drake

Source: Global Crypto

Image: