Goldman Sachs Executes First-Ever Ether-Linked Derivative Trade

Banking giant Goldman Sachs began trading the Ethereum-pegged derivative on Monday. The asset is intended to provide investors with indirect access to Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

• According to Bloomberg, Marex Financial, a London-based financial services company, acted as the counterparty to the deal.
• The move comes on a day when the entire crypto market, including Ethereum, plummeted to a low not seen since December 2020. The total market value is now less than $1 trillion, and Bitcoin’s market capitalization is less than $450 billion.
• The deal may indicate a sense of long-term faith in crypto as an asset class despite recent downturns. In January, the company’s former CEO admitted that crypto is “going on” despite being a skeptic for a long time.
• In the past, the bulk of Goldman’s crypto options have been centered around bitcoin-related derivatives since the relaunch of such services in July 2021. It became the first major US bank to offer OTC bitcoin options trading in March.
• Goldman has announced that it will soon offer options for trading Ethereum with cash in April, and has even stated that the cryptocurrency could surpass Bitcoin as a store of value in July 2021.
• The bank originally expected Ethereum to reach $8,000 by the end of 2021, but that forecast is far from the target.
• In February 2020, both Goldman Sachs and Citigroup experimented with a blockchain-based stock exchange similar to that possible with Ethereum.