Goldman Sachs restarts the cryptocurrency trading desk, Citi, Fidelity have successively blessed Bitcoin

Goldman Sachs has restarted the cryptocurrency trading desk and will provide customers with bitcoin futures and non-deliverable forward contracts (NDF) trading services starting next week.

According to media reports, this team belongs to the bank's global marketing department. This department was established by Goldman Sachs in response to the rapidly growing activities in the digital asset sector. Currently, the bank is still exploring the possibility of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, and has issued an information request to explore digital asset custody.

At present, institutions including CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange Corporation and Fidelity have begun to provide products and services on cryptocurrencies.

Jurrien Timmer, head of global macro business at Fidelity, said that Bitcoin has convincing supply and demand dynamics. He believes that the current Bitcoin asset value is only 900 billion U.S. dollars, and given the 11 trillion U.S. dollar asset value of gold and the global total financial assets of 160 trillion U.S. dollars, there is still a lot of room for the cryptocurrency to rise.

Timmer said: "If Bitcoin is a legitimate store of value, scarcer than gold, and has the potential for index demand dynamics, is it worth considering including it in the portfolio now?" He said the question may no longer be "yes." , But "how much".

Citi has previously released a report of more than 100 pages, stating that as companies such as Tesla and PayPal are enthusiastic about Bitcoin, and central banks are also exploring the issuance of their own digital currencies, Bitcoin is currently at a “critical level”. "Point" may one day become the currency of choice for international trade.

Citigroup believes that with the pursuit of digital currencies such as Bitcoin by retail investors and institutional investors, there has been a trend that is good for Bitcoin but not good for gold, and this trend is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. Citi also pointed out that for digital currencies, changes in regulatory policies are the biggest risk. If regulations are tightened, some speculative funds will return to the gold market.

Goldman Sachs first set up a cryptocurrency trading department as early as 2018, but at that time Bitcoin prices were falling from record highs, eroding investors' interest in digital currencies.

Cryptocurrency was previously avoided by elite companies such as Goldman Sachs, but it is now gaining trust, and other banks and financial institutions also have related business plans. The Bank of New York Mellon said in mid-February that it would hold, transfer and issue digital currencies, saying that this is the first time a global bank has provided such services to customers. MasterCard also stated that it will allow cardholders to conduct transactions in cryptocurrency on its network. The company said last month that it is "actively participating" in the digital currency program of global central banks.

As Goldman Sachs restarted its cryptocurrency trading department, digital assets have rocketed in the past few months. The price of Bitcoin has risen more than five times in the past year, and investors such as Paul Tudor Jones, Stan Druckenmiller, and Elon Musk are racing to join the game. Musk’s Tesla Company announced in February that it had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.