Goldman Sachs Planning to Offer OTC Ether Options Trading
Multinational investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has revealed intentions to introduce OTC Ether options trading, following a surge in demand from clients for the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Wall Street Bank Looking to Trade ETH Options
According to Bloomberg on Tuesday (April 5, 2022), Goldman Sachs’ head of Global crypto trading Andrei Kazantsev made the statement during a client webinar. While Kazantsev did not state the exact time when the over-the-counter (OTC) Ether options trading will roll out, the Goldman Sachs executive said the launch will happen “in due course”.
Interestingly, the decision to expand its crypto options trading offering to include Ether is in response to an increased interest from its clients. An associate on Goldman Sachs’ digital assets team, George Lewis-Smith there has been growing conversation around Ether, which is seen by clients as “more of an investable asset class.”
Indeed, Goldman Sachs recently ventured into offering OTC Bitcoin options trading, becoming the first Wall Street bank to do so. The cash-settled derivatives option which was carried out in collaboration with digital assets banking firm Galaxy Digital.
Goldman’s OTC crypto derivatives trading expansion is coming amid reports that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is considering altcoin futures and options. This move will be in addition to futures, options, micro-futures, and micro-options contracts for BTC and Ether already brought to market by the CME.
Institutional interest in trading digital assets appears to be growing as seen by the expansion of market makers and other entities responsible for delivering deep order book liquidity to support large trade execution. Crypto market-maker Wintermute on Wednesday announced the launch of its OTC trading platform for institutional players.
Dubbed Node, the company says the service combines both its existing API service with proprietary price discovery and zero-fee click-to-trade execution capabilities.
Growing Institutional Interest for Crypto Derivatives
Goldman Sachs recently revealed that it is planning to offer Bitcoin and Ethereum to its wealthy clients, in partnership with Galaxy Digital. Back in March, the Wall Street Giant filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to connect its clients to Galaxy Digital’s Ether fund.
The second-most popular cryptocurrency is currently trading slightly above $3200. As previously reported by crypto.news, the Ethereum Foundation announced the successful implementation of the Merge on the public testnet Kiln, which is the final step before transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).
The long-awaited transition to the PoS mechanism is expected to happen sometime in 2022, and will improve Ethereum network’s scalability and efficiency, as well as reduce carbon footprint. According to a statement from the Foundation:
“This merge signals the culmination of six years of research and development in Ethereum and will result in a more secure network, predictable block times, and a 99.98%+ reduction in power use when it is released on mainnet later in 2022.”
At the time of writing, over 10.7 million ETH have been staked on the Beacon chain.
