David Solomon, the CEO of the 150-year-old banking giant Goldman Sachs, recently acknowledged Bitcoin’s (BTC) potential as a store of value during an appearance on CNBC from the Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Solomon also lauded blockchain technology’s potential to digitize finance. He, however, stressed he is not one to speculate on the price of the most prominent cryptocurrency or any other digital assets.
Blockchain Is “Super Interesting”: Goldman CEO
The CEO of one of the world’s largest banks is not ruling out Bitcoin becoming a store of value akin to gold.
Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon told CNBC that Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology is “super interesting”, noting how improvements can be made to make the financial system more frictionless as it becomes more digitized.
Solomon reiterated that he believes BTC is a speculative investment.
“I’ve always said I think it’s a speculative investment,” he posited, “I don’t see a real use case.”
When questioned whether establishing a reserve similar to a gold reserve is a store of value case or use case for the benchmark crypto, Solomon posited, “There very well could be a store of value case.”
The CEO of the world's largest asset manager is a "major believer."The CEO of Goldman Sachs says it "could have a use case as a store of value."More than half of the world's largest hedge funds own it.And I meet people all the time who are "certain" it's going to zero. https://t.co/j3JrBjjNQI
— Matt Hougan (@Matt_Hougan) July 30, 2024
This comes after former President Donald Trump pledged to create a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” for the United States at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on July 27. Trump didn’t explicitly give any specifics on stockpiling BTC, only saying that the U.S. should keep all of its holdings it has acquired through seizures and whatever it gets in the future as a reserve.
Goldman Sachs’ Role In The Crypto Industry
Notably, Goldman Sachs introduced its crypto trading desk back in 2021, which offers exposure to crypto derivatives, including Bitcoin and Ether
options and futures. At the time, Solomon declared that Bitcoin was on an “inevitable path to have the same market capitalization and then a higher one than gold.”
Despite the CEO’s rather tepid remarks Tuesday, 2024 has emerged as a big year for Goldman’s foray into the crypto space. In March, Goldman Sachs executive Max Minton revealed that the launch of the U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) had re-catalyzed the bank’s client interest in crypto assets.
In April, BTC ETF giant BlackRock added the traditional finance behemoth as one of the authorized participants (APs) to the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
Goldman was undoubtedly early to the tokenization trend. Earlier this month, Fortune reported that the Wall Street titan was preparing to roll out three new tokenization products later this year in the United States and Europe on the back of “a major uptick in interest from clients” in crypto.
