Another Wall Street Giant Prepares to Join the Crypto Bandwagon 

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), a Wall Street investment banking heavyweight has revealed plans to launch its own distributed ledger technology (DLT) based cryptocurrency just like Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan, reports Forbes on August 9, 2020.

Institutional Investors Betting Big on Cryptos and DLT

As bitcoin (BTC) keeps gaining popularity around the globe, with the underlying blockchain technology also moving in an upward trajectory in terms of use cases across industries in the world economy, more and more institutions are now taking the revolutionary technologies more seriously.

In the latest development, 51-year-old Wall Street investment banking, securities, and investment management heavyweight, Goldman Sachs has made it clear that it’s weighing the possibility of rolling out its own blockchain-based stablecoin, just like its major competitor, JPMorgan Chase bank.

In a bid to make its blockchain project a success, earlier in July, Goldman Sachs appointed Mathew McDermott, a veteran in the traditional financial ecosystem, as its new global head of digital assets. McDermott has revealed that the investment bank is interested in joining the stablecoin bandwagon and as a statement of intent, Goldman Sachs has engaged the services of Oli Harris, JPMorgan’s head of digital assets who is the brain box behind the bank’s dollar-pegged JPM Coin.

McDermott said:

“We are exploring the commercial viability of creating our own fiat digital token, but its early days as we continue to work through the potential use cases.”

Love-Hate Relationship

It’s worth noting that Goldman Sachs has always had a love-hate relationship with bitcoin (BTC) but believes the underlying technology has all it takes to disrupt all sectors of the global economy. 

As reported by BTCManager in April 2018 Goldman Sachs hired Justin Schmidt to manage its digital assets operations and a proposed crypto trading desk. Fast-forward to May 2020 and the firm’s analysts listed five reasons why they think bitcoin is not an asset class worth investing in.

However, it appears Sachs and its financial experts have now had a total change of heart as McDermott has revealed the firm intends to use DLT to revolutionize its operations and create forward-looking crypto and blockchain-powered consortiums, as “there is now a resurgence of interest in cryptoassets.”

Goldman Sachs is not alone in its crypto adoption journey. A recent report from bitcoin and blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis has revealed that more and more institutional investors are now buying bitcoin and other digital currencies.

At press time, the price of bitcoin (BTC) is hovering around $11,991, with a market capitalization of $221.32 billion, as seen on CoinMarketCap.