American investment bank and Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs processed its first Bitcoin-backed loan deal on Thursday. According to one publication According to Bloomberg, the bank provided a loan to a customer while accepting Bitcoin as collateral.
“The secured loan facility lent cash secured by Bitcoin owned by the borrower. The deal was interesting to Goldman because of its structure and round-the-clock risk management,” a spokesperson for the bank said according to the Bloomberg report.
This is another significant step in the acceptance of digital assets by investment banking. In early March, they began offering over-the-counter trading options for Bitcoin to their clients, with bank executives also announcing intentions to replicate the same with the token. ethereum.
Goldman Sachs is also fraternizing with major players in the crypto space. Recently, news broke of a “secret” meeting between company director David Solomon and Sam-Bankman Fried, CEO of FTX. Apparently, the New York-based bank was seeking a “partnership of sorts” with the cryptocurrency exchange services company.
Goldman Sachs is just one of the Wall Street banks with an interest in digital assets
In addition to Goldman Sachs, other Wall Street titans have also been wowed by the burgeoning digital asset economy. In March 2021, Morgan Stanley began offering its clientele access to Bitcoin Funds. It was the first such service in the United States. Besides, JP Morgan Chase is the first bank in the world to enter the metaverse. In early February this year, the bank launched a virtual reality lounge in the blockchain-based virtual reality world, Decentraland. Later that month, they also announced an investment in blockchain analytics firm TRM labs. Alongside US banks, other large conventional banks around the world have significant stakes in the cryptocurrency market. These financial institutions have a combined interest of around $3 billion in the cryptocurrency market according to a statistics report from crypto analytics firm Blockdata. Other major banks around the world with crypto interests include Japan’s largest bank, Banco MUFG, as well as BBVA bank in Spain. London-based Standard Chartered PLC has the largest investment in the digital asset economy of any bank in the world. They have invested a total of $380 million through 6 fundraising rounds for crypto startups.
