Goldman Sachs, a global investment banking giant, is set to start offering over-the-counter (OTC) cash-settled ether options "in due course," Andrei Kazantsev, global head of crypto trading at Goldman, told Bloomberg.
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Currently, Goldman doesn't have spot crypto trading, but the bank gives its clients access to European and Canadian exchange-traded products (ETPs) that can be used as a proxy, Kazantsev noted. The move comes just a few weeks after Goldman Sachs executed its first OTC crypto transaction with Galaxy Digital in the form of a bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) non-deliverable option.
The company said in a press release this was the first OTC crypto transaction made by a major bank in the US. Damien Vanderwilt, Co-President, and Head of Global Markets at Galaxy Digital, added that the company hopes the milestone to open the door "for other banks considering OTC as a conduit for trading digital assets."
In March, Goldman's analysts said investors should be skeptical of the narrative that rising adoption of the cryptocurrency market will boost prices. Particularly, Goldman strategists Zach Pandl and Isabella Rosenberg wrote in a report that the more adoption cryptocurrencies get, the more correlated they become with traditional assets. This, in turn, might harm crypto's role as a diversification asset.
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