Goldman Sachs to become second bank to offer bitcoin investment to wealthy clients

Two weeks after Morgan Stanley said it would begin offering its wealthy clients access to bitcoin, banking giant Goldman Sachs told CNBC today that it will also offer its private wealth clients a “full range” of cryptocurrency investments in the coming months.

Mary Rich, the new head of Goldman Sachs' global digital assets, said in an interview with CNBC today that Goldman Sachs expects to begin offering Bitcoin investment tools to clients of its private wealth management division in the second quarter of 2021.

While Goldman Sachs has not yet said which cryptocurrency investment products it will begin supporting, Rich said the bank ultimately wants to offer a “full range” of digital asset investments, including the tokens themselves, derivatives and traditional investment vehicles.

Mary Rich

In an internal memo announcing Rich’s appointment today, Goldman Sachs said Rich will “leverage the firm’s capabilities to ensure it is able to meet client interest in digital asset classes and technologies.”

According to previous reports by Bitpush, Goldman Sachs restarted its Bitcoin trading department a few weeks ago, but before that Goldman Sachs only acted as a market maker to buy and sell Bitcoin on behalf of clients and did not actively manage the cryptocurrency itself.

According to Bitpush data, as of press time, the current price of Bitcoin is around US$59,300, up 9% in the past week and 820% in the past year.

“It’s inevitable that Bitcoin will reach the same or higher market cap than gold,” billionaire Michael Novogratz told CNBC today. “That’s how fast adoption is happening. It’s happening faster than I expected, and it’s shocking to me how quickly people are getting into crypto.” Gold’s current market cap is about $10.6 trillion, and Bitcoin’s is about $1.1 trillion.

Michael Novogratz

This month, many Wall Street institutions have once again sent friendly signals towards Bitcoin. According to previous reports by Bitpush, Fidelity Investments has applied for its first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund ETF, and banking giant Morgan Stanley has also stated that it will open Bitcoin investment channels to its wealthy clients.