Goldman Sachs will now offer Bitcoin-based investment products to clients of its private wealth management group. According to Mary Rich, the global head of digital assets, the bank will aim to offer investments in the emerging digital asset class as early as this quarter.
“We are working closely with teams across the firm to explore ways to offer thoughtful and appropriate access to the ecosystem for private wealth clients, and that is something we expect to offer in the near term,” she said.
As Bitcoin and the broader crypto market surged to new highs this year, institutional demand has also skyrocketed. In a survey conducted by the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Division, more than 40% of its clients were found to already have exposure to cryptocurrencies. Goldman announced last month that it would restart its cryptocurrency trading desk, offering derivative-based Bitcoin futures to its institutional clients.
Bitcoin Continues to Outperform Gold and Why That Matters
Now, with growing mainstream acceptance of cryptos, asset management firms are turning to wealthy clients. With recent inflation fears and rising treasury yields, investors are looking for investments to hedge against the dollar. “There’s a contingent of clients who are looking to this asset as a hedge against inflation, and the macro backdrop over the past year has certainly played into that,” Rich said. Even for older, more conservative clients, Bitcoin has become a more attractive investment than gold; the digital asset has appreciated nearly 600% in 2021, whereas the precious metal has lost 11% this quarter alone.
Michael Novogratz, founder of Galaxy Digital, shared similar sentiments. He explained that as cryptocurrencies continued to gain traction and effectively replace gold, wealthy baby boomers would be the next big adopters of blockchain technology, elaborating: “[i]t could be as much as a trillion dollars over the next year from that giant group of wealth.” Whether this will come true remains to be seen. However, considering recent developments in institutional adoption, Bitcoin’s mass-adoption as an investment vehicle seems almost inevitable.
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