FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Alameda Ventures made recent headlines for bailing out a handful of CeFi crypto platforms this week, but what exactly do market makers do?
Goldman Sachs and Barclays invest in UK crypto trading platform Elwood
The global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs said the demand for cryptocurrency from institutions is rising and the firm has been “actively broadening” its market capabilities to cater to that demand.
Goodbye, Russia – A Number Of Goldman Sachs Employees Are Leaving Russia To UAE
Goldman Sachs is relocating some of its Moscow-based staff to the United Arab Emirates as a result of Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine, numerous news agencies reported Sunday.
The Wall Street behemoth is sending some of its employees to Dubai, a key financial hub in the Middle East, as foreign corporations reevaluate their Russian operations as the Ukraine crisis enters its second week.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a New York City-based international investment bank and financial services company.
Goldman Sachs employs over 40,500 people and had total assets of approximately $1.2 trillion as of 2021.
Related Article | Billionaire Investor Says Crypto Outlook Is ‘Very Bullish’ For Bitcoin
Urging Goldman Sachs To Abandon Russia
Georgy Egorov, a former Goldman Sachs banker, published an open letter to the company’s Chief Executive Officer David Solomon this week, urging the bank to exit Russia and shift workers in order to be “on the right side of history.”
Egorov, who was born in Russia, suggested that Goldman should suspend all operations in Russia “as a show of defiance” and join international sanctions against what he described as a “criminal regime.”
Russia has been slapped with heavy international sanctions that have thrown its economy into a tailspin – the outcome of a coordinated global effort to isolate Moscow in the aftermath of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
British MPs Pressure Banks To Halt Russian Operations
As a result of this development, British members of parliament are also pressing large banks to terminate their Moscow services, after campaigners accused them of “quietly benefitting” from their Russian activities while other industries are distancing themselves from the country.
Several of Moscow’s largest lenders, including HSBC, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse employ thousands of people to provide banking services to large firms and wealthy clients conducting business in Russia.
BTC total market cap at $723.85 billion on the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com
Goldman Sachs Asset Management reduced its exposure to Russia in its GQG foreign equities fund to around $222 million earlier this week, down from more than $1.7 billion six months ago.
On Monday, Netflix, American Express, and two leading accounting companies suspended connections with Russia in response to its atrocities in Ukraine.
Russia-Friendly Dubai
Dubai is regarded as one of the few flourishing cities in the world with a government that is friendly to Russia.
The UAE abstained from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of last month.
Related Article | Bitcoin Falls Back To $38,000 As Russia Steps Up Bombardment Of Ukraine
Goldman Sachs Bullish On Bitcoin
According to Goldman Sachs, Bitcoin currently holds a 20% share of the “store of value” market.
With gold reaching a critical level of $2,000 per ounce on Monday, Goldman Sachs analyst Zach Pandl believes Bitcoin has the ability to surpass the $100,000 mark in the coming years.
Bitcoin was priced at $38,181.82 on Monday, according to Coingecko’s monitoring. In the last 24 hours, the cryptocurrency has lost 3.5%.
Featured image from ODDS.com, chart from TradingView.com
Crypto hodlers may not get richer from mainstream adoption — Goldman Sachs
More demand could just mean bigger correlations to traditional markets, the bank’s researchers say.
Bitcoin $100K possible by chipping away at gold’s market share: Goldman Sachs
Bitcoin has a good chance to topple $100,000 by taking market share from gold as a store of value, Goldman Sachs analysts predicted.
Goldman Sachs reportedly started trading on JPMorgan’s repo blockchain
Goldman Sachs reportedly traded digitized treasury bonds for JPM Coin on JPMorgan Chase’s Onyx blockchain platform.
Goldman Sachs Partners With Galaxy Digital For Bitcoin Futures
Goldman Sachs furthering investment into bitcoin, and even crypto more broadly, shouldn’t surprise anyone too much by now. The top-tier global investment and financial services firm has emphasized this quarter as the one to get their crypto services in swing, and this recent partnership announcement falls in line with exactly that.
The Partnership Perspective: Galaxy Digital
According to a CNBC report, Goldman Sachs is teaming up with Mike Novogratz’s crypto merchant bank, Galaxy Digital. The partnership will enable Galaxy Digital to be Goldman’s liquidity provider for bitcoin futures buy and sell orders on the CME Group derivatives exchange.
In a statement regarding the partnership, head of digital assets for Goldman Sach’s Asia-Pacific region Max Minton said “our goal is to equip our clients with best-execution pricing and secure access to the assets they want to trade. In 2021, this now includes crypto, and we are pleased to have found a partner with a broad range of liquidity venues and differentiated derivatives capabilities spanning the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”
The team at Galaxy Digital is of course optimistic looking forward; Galaxy co-president Damien Vanderwilt went on the record in an interview last week stating that “once one bank is out there doing this, the other banks will have [fear of missing out] and they’ll get on-boarded because their clients have been asking for it”. Vanderwilt’s suggestion that other banks will follow suit is certainly not out of the question, either. “There’s a whole dynamic with the major banks that I’ve seen time and time again: safety in numbers”, said Vanderwilt.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Flash Crash Pauses As Goldman Sachs Announces Crypto Services
More “Bank” For Your Buck
Banks are understandably timid when it comes to diving in, but crypto derivatives have been a speculative tool that many see as a gateway for more financial services firms to get involved. This is because of strict regulations that make bitcoin difficult to maneuver around traditionally, but more streamlined in the derivatives landscape.
The partnership news comes less than a week following reports that Goldman Sachs is planning to offer clients the ability to trade options and futures in ethereum. Additionally, the news comes just a few short months after the company resurrected plans from roughly four years ago around a cryptocurrency trading desk. That trading desk, sure enough, came to life last month.
Speculation is abound that the recent partnership for Goldman could apply pressure on the rest of the institutional marketplace to follow in their tracks.
Crypto's continued emergence throughout 2021 have reeled in traditional investors to apply pressure financial services companies to service crypto assets. | Source: CRYPTOCAP on TradingView.com
Related Reading | Goldman Sachs Files For An ETF With Option To Invest In Bitcoin
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