The first large Wall Street firm is setting up cryptocurrency Trading desk

Goldman Sachs is setting up a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies such as bitcoin and others, according to people with expertise of the strategy. The bank aims to get the business running by the end of June next year, if not earlier, some people said. Another said it’s still trying to work out security issues as well as how it would hold, or custody, the assets.

The move positions Goldman Sachs to become the first large Wall Street firm to make markets in cryptocurrencies, whose wild price swings and surging values have captured the public’s imagination but given pause to established institutions. Already, the bank is among just a few mainstream firms clearing a new breed of bitcoin futures offered by Cboe Global Markets Inc. and CME Group Inc. Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., for example, have been taking a wait-and-see approach.

Goldman Sachs is now assembling a team in New York, one of the people said. While the bank hasn’t made a decision where to house the desk, one possibility is that it will operate within the fixed-income, currencies and commodities unit’s systematic trading function, which conducts transactions electronically, two people said. Darren Cohen, in the firm’s principal strategic investments group, is also looking at opportunities, another person said.

Still Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Office Lloyd Blankfein said on 30th of November 2017: “Something that moves up and down 20 percent in a day doesn’t feel like a currency, doesn’t feel like a store of value.” He also said that he felt no urgency for his firm to develop a plan for dealing with bitcoin. “Life must be really, really rosy if this is what we’re talking about,” he joked.

It only took three months to change his mind about cryptocurrency. Was this diversification or business strategy we will never know, but still it means that Wall Street is entering in crypto world.

This means one of the strongest firm on Wall Street will enter the market with billions of dollars of assets. With Goldman Sachs will also enter other powerful partners and friends. This move could make a lot of market fluctuation.

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