FT: Goldman Sachs executes its first bitcoin derivatives trades

The FT‘s Eva Szalay writes:

Goldman Sachs executed its first cryptocurrency trades and formalised the set-up of its bitcoin desk on Friday, two months after the US bank announced that it would re-enter the fledgling market.

In a memo sent to staff on Thursday, seen by the Financial Times, Rajesh Venkataramani, head of major currencies, informed staff that the bank had “successfully executed” trades of two types of bitcoin-linked derivatives.

The bank said on March 1 that it would relaunch its mothballed cryptocurrency trading desk due to growing demand from institutional clients. Goldman was one of the first banks to set up a crypto operation but the creation of the desk in 2018 coincided with bitcoin’s spectacular price crash, prompting the bank to quietly abandon the initial project.

The value of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by volume, is up 95 per cent since the start of the year after a spectacular rally last year that saw it become one of the best-performing financial assets in the world. On Friday, bitcoin was trading at $57,385.

The revived Goldman trading desk will not deal in cash cryptocurrencies but instead trade futures and non-deliverable forwards as part of the initially “quite narrow” push into the space, according to Mathew McDermott, head of the digital assets team…

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Now read this: “Goldman Sachs internal memo unveils new cryptocurrency trading team“.