Prepare yourselves. If you thought bitcoin was in a very overblown bubble last year, then just wait until we see what the investment bankers can do when they hold
real actual bitcoins.
The same with the housing bubble, it will be decades in the making until we witness the bubble burst, I reckon.
The bank’s first “digital asset” trader, Justin Schmidt, joined Goldman two weeks ago to handle the day-to-day operations, a hiring that was first reported by Tearsheet. In his last job, Mr. Schmidt, 38, was an electronic trader at the hedge fund Seven Eight Capital. In 2017, he left that job to trade virtual currencies on his own.
He will initially be placed on Goldman’s foreign currency desk because Bitcoin trading has the most similarity to movements in emerging market currencies, Ms. Yared said.
Mr. Schmidt is looking at trading actual Bitcoin — or physical Bitcoin, as it is somewhat ironically called — if the bank can secure regulatory approval from the Federal Reserve and New York authorities.
The firm also has to find a way to confidently hold Bitcoin for customers without its being stolen by hackers, as has happened to many Bitcoin exchanges. Mr. Schmidt and Ms. Yared said the current options for holding Bitcoin for clients did not yet meet Wall Street standards.
Goldman is known for pushing the envelope in the trading of complicated products. The firm faced significant criticism after the financial crisis for its profitable trading of so-called synthetic derivatives tied to the subprime mortgage markets.Read in full https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/technology/bitcoin-goldman-sachs.html
