'Maybe bitcoin is a kind of a bubble,' Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein

[iamTom123]

People who are working with the traditional banking and finance sector are not really comfortable thinking about Bitcoin because this is a new field to play with and they are not so familiar with the rules of the game. These are the people that love to have some kind of control and they can not do it with Bitcoin. Unfortunately, many of the CEOs of this sector seem to have no basic knowledge on Bitcoin and is speaking more about themselves rather than the digital currency making waves right now. Their point of views is quite reflective of a sector that is already starting to feel the disruption and they know that in the future their business can be affected big time that is why some are fighting it though some would have no choice but to go along with the trend in the name of profits. It is fortunate that right now the market is not anymore listening to these people and rightly so because these people are not Bitcoin experts at all.

[bbc.reporter]

It's because bitcoin has been outperforming stocks and other investments and their clients are giving them a hard time because Goldman never recommended the trade of the year.

Things might change if they end up actually setting up their trading platform, which will allow their wealthy clients and institutions to enter this market. That might be the reason he isn't completely writing Bitcoin off like other CEO's of notorious wall street banks have been doing. Important factor is the constantly increasing demand from their clients that are likely bombing Goldman Sachs with Bitcoin requests, now they realize that this market offers far more profit than the traditional markets. I at some point expect every bank to at least allow their clients to buy themselves into Bitcoin directly, or through various financial instruments tied to Bitcoin's market - this is where the money is.

Do you really reckon that the wealthy Goldman Sachs clients want bitcoin investments? I reckon not. All they want is a stable investment, not a highly volatile something that they do not understand. They became wealthy because they made smart decisions, not because they went to invest in the next big fad, which is what cryptocoins is for them.

They are partly correct because the cryptospace is full of untested and unused technology and scams.

[Samarkand]

...
They are partly correct because the cryptospace is full of untested and unused technology and scams.

And full of opportunities!

Depending on your ethics you can get really rich, really fast simply by setting up
a profesionally looking ICO. Even if you have moral constraints that prevent you from doing this
the whole crypto space currently resembles a "gold rush era". There are many early adopters, who bought
BTC or ETH when they were ridiculously cheap.

However, I concede that the unregulated nature of the current cryptocurrency scene begets an
unprecented amount of outright scams, vaporware or simply untested and unused technologies.
If you doubt this simply take a look at all apps based on Ethereum - there is not a single one,
which actually has a non-negligible user base.

[Andre#]

At the moment he was right with his prophecy as price dropped from $7,500 to $6,000! But I do not think he tries to bad mouth bitcoin so they can buy at a lower price. If they had interest in bitcoin they would have bought long time before and they just want to protect their fiat scamming system.

No one can has right prediction for long time with Bitcoin, even the those who holded Bitcoin since 2010 as "pizza boy" also surprised when the price of Bitcoin pumped to high price as now.
Nowadays, the price of Bitcoin look like as a bubble, it is truth because there is no asset increases crazy like Bitcoin.

[Lieldoryn]

How do you define a bitcoin bubble or not? Any new project has always the signs of a bubble. Initially, it accumulates capital and is very similar to bubble. But now there is a lot of talk about what bitcoin will be accepted as payment for goods. Japan is already doing. In this case, bitcoin will get the status of the currency and starts to move away from the signs of a bubble.

[ivrynx]

The definition of a bubble, it when the value gets so high, it will be worthless in a short period of time, in this case experts might give another definition for a bubble, in which they mostly do, when they do not understand a thing. Bitcoin is not a bubble, because it started out as a currency then it had increased in value turning it into an asset. They will need more time to study bitcoin and it's economics,  it is something new to them and must be further researched, they could not just go on saying it is a bubble, since it is not a company like those in the dotcom boom.

[alyssa85]

Some background has now come out on this story from Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-31/goldman-sachs-felt-rushed-by-quick-roll-out-of-bitcoin-futures

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has a reputation for being one step ahead of its Wall Street rivals. But it wasn’t ready for Bitcoin futures.

When two exchanges got the green light in December to list derivatives contracts tied to the suddenly ubiquitous digital coin, Goldman was still mulling whether it was appropriate for its own employees to trade futures, said Rana Yared, a managing director at the firm. Before Goldman had made up its mind, clients started asking the bank to execute their transactions, she said.

At a public meeting held Wednesday in Washington, Yared made clear to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- the U.S.’s top derivatives regulator -- that Goldman wasn’t exactly thrilled with the quick rollout by CME Group Inc. and Cboe Global Markets Inc.

“The launch of the product by both the Cboe and the CME left us in a very interesting position of having to receive contracts from clients that we ourselves have not made a decision as to how to regard,” Yared said. It’s “critical” for major clearing firms like Goldman to be prepared for new contracts so they can “risk manage them appropriately,” she added.