American cyberbanking giant Goldman Sachs has officially confirmed its plans to revive a cryptocurrency trading desk amid increasing need from investors.

Matt McDermott, global head of digital avails for Goldman Sachs' global markets partitioning, announced that the company will provide access to CME Bitcoin (BTC) futures on its upcoming crypto platform. In a Friday Exchanges at Goldman Sachs podcast, the executive also noted that Goldman Sachs volition offer crypto services with non-deliverable forwards, or NDFs, which are cash-settled, and normally brusk-term, forrad contracts.

McDermott noted that initially Goldman Sachs' crypto platform will exist express to these two products, stating:

"We're really going alive with that crypto trading desk, which would exist quite narrow initially, only nosotros will focus on CME futures and non-deliverable forwards. And we're also at present disseminating Bitcoin content to our institutional clients through our Marquee platform."

Co-ordinate to McDermott, Goldman Sachs' move into crypto comes in response to the increasing demand from its clients. Citing an internal survey of nearly 300 clients, the executive said that forty% of Goldman Sachs' investors currently have exposure to crypto. "That seemed actually a little high to me, just I felt that was kind of very cogitating of the demand we've seen over the last 3 to half dozen months," he said.

The executive also reported that 61% of Goldman Sachs' surveyed clients look digital-asset holdings to increase over the next twelvemonth. Particularly, 76% of those surveyed meet Bitcoin ending 2021 betwixt $40,000 and $100,000, McDermott said. However, only 22% expect Bitcoin to surpass the $100,000 marker past the terminate of 2021, he noted.

Goldman Sachs originally wanted to set a crypto trading desk in 2018, announcing the program in late 2017. At the time, Bitcoin was sitting at its former all-fourth dimension high levels afterward hitting $20,000 in December 2017. Following a subsequent sell-off on crypto markets in 2018, Goldman Sachs was rumored to have canceled its crypto desk plans. Eventually, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon strongly refuted that the depository financial institution ever had plans to open up a crypto trading desk-bound in 2019.

In the latest interview, McDermott pointed out that the existing crypto mural is very much different than 2017 in terms of growing institutional need. "2017 was very much a retail-driven market. This time around, nosotros've seen a huge volume of institutional demand beyond a broad spectrum of different industry types," he said.