Bitcoin Forum

A Goldman Sachs partner will join Galaxy Digital to help bridge the gap between Wall Street and crypto

Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital is bringing on a Goldman Sachs partner as its co-president and head of global markets.

Damien Vanderwilt will be joining Galaxy Digital after more than 20 years with the bulge bracket bank. He most recently served as its global head of FICC Execution Services. At the bank, he also played a role in building out Goldman's Marquee Trader, a single dealer trading platform. He got his start in equities execution services and trading in 2000. His tenure at the bank spanned roles in London, Hong Kong, and Sydney, as per his LinkedIn.

In his role at Galaxy, the Vanderwilt will leverage his contacts from the Wall Street world to drum up business across its respective units. In an interview with The Block, Novogratz said that a recent influx of macro hedge funds and pensions into the digital asset market made the pipeline for its products stronger than it has been historically. In many periods of Galaxy's history, it has struggled to churn a profit and keep on talent.

"In January, I was cautious and frustrated," Novogratz, a former macro trader, said. "But now I've been on so many freaking calls. The wealth channel is exciting, pensions are looking at more venture stuff and it feels like the business is growing fast."

"You have multiple hedge funds buying bitcoin as a macro play and almost every fund is looking at it," he added.

The firm has been building out its trading capabilities to meet the needs of these clients, partnering with custody provider Bakkt on a service that aims to help large investors tap into the digital asset market. Galaxy also built out its electronic sales and trading platform and, like many companies in the market, it has been eyeing prime brokerage services.

Aside from trading, Vanderwilt will also help the investment banking business raise capital for clients and ramp up deal flow. The company is said to be raising for a large mining company and is working on bringing in more talent as it adjusts for the upcoming exit of Ian Taylor, who has led the business since 2018. Taylor will rejoin Goldman Sachs later this year.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/79372/a-goldman-sachs-partner-will-join-galaxy-digital-to-help-bridge-the-gap-between-wall-street-and-crypto

There are wall street companies like Goldman Sachs that tries to get involved with crypto because they know what they are doing right now is really something special, crypto is the future and they need to be part of the future in order to survive, if they continue with traditional markets forever eventually that will go down, people will stop investing into companies in order to make them rich when they realize the companies they help are the reason why they are poor themselves and why those companies are rich.

So, wall street has to figure out a way to get out of traditional markets one way or another, maybe in 10 years, maybe in 50 or maybe in 100 who knows when but they have to, so the best way to start is to follow up on the newest trends which is crypto currencies right now.

I do understand for a fact why these companies want to invest in cryptocurrencies but unfortunately I don't understand why people would buy bitcoins from them?
It is all about having no middle man and therefore why should people not only compromise their privacy but also their freedom!!!
They want cryptocurrencies to be listed in the same list as stocks but unfortunately this is not only wrong but also unnecessary. People actually need to understand the fact that bitcoins don't need the support of big companies to prove that, they are worth it.


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I don't really understand the point!!!
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They are decentralized and if you have the keys to your wallet, its owned by no one but you.
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Don't comprise the freedom and see the buying opportunities out there instead of going for big companies who aims to change cryptocurrencies into some kind of unnecessary stocks to earn some profits.

Their target audience and customers are those people who are scared of bitcoin but wants to have it through them. With their service, those people are confident that their money is in good hands but they never know that they can buy on their own and don't need to go through with any third party if it's just about buying bitcoin. The point is that they are a well known company and buyers have no worries, nothing new with that. It's like the bank that's holding cryptos for them which they are trusting more than their own bare hands.

WTF is this nonsense?Wall street to get out of the traditional markets?Wall Street IS A MARKET. ;D ;D
How can a market get out of the markets?I guess you mean that companies,which are trading on Wall Street want to get out of the traditional markets(which isn't the case,they simply don't want this).
I don't believe that the Goldman Sachs guys think that cryptocurrencies are the future.They just view crypto as a way to diversify their assets and to get some profits.A bank like Goldman Sachs will never go "all in" on crypto.

Goldman Sach, Merill Lynch, JP Morgan represents Wallstreet which is the real money owner. With the hiring of influencers at Goldman Sach, Galaxy Digital hopes that the Wall Street elephants will invest in cryptocurrency. Since 2017 Goldman Sach has shown its interest in exploring opportunities to trade bitcoin and other digital currencies. Damien Vanderwilt is used as marketing by Galaxy Digital to attract conventional traders to take the floor on crypto exchanges.

If wall street wants to make crypto something a bit more common so that they could make money as well, keep up what Microstrategy and Grayscale is doing but do it in a much larger number as well.

If Microstrategy could buy hundreds of millions of dollars with how small it is, places like Goldman Sachs could do that in billions as well if they wanted, and add that to places like like JP Morgan and so forth and you have yourself something much much larger as well, if all big wall street companies got together they could buy over 10 billion dollars worth of crypto which would make bitcoin suddenly skyrocket.

But they are not doing that, they are taking their time to make sure they get involved first and that is why they are not closing the gap just yet, maybe over a long period of time.