Goldman Sachs was preparing to use its own capital to trade bitcoin-linked contracts with clients, the New York Times reported on May 2, 2018 after interviewing Goldman executive Rana Yared. The planned operation marked a significant institutional step for bitcoin, but its scope was narrower than the phrase “bitcoin trading desk” suggested.
Goldman did not plan initially to buy, sell or custody bitcoin. The reported products were derivatives whose value would track bitcoin’s price, allowing the bank to serve institutional clients without taking possession of the underlying digital asset. That distinction mattered because regulated futures infrastructure already existed, while custody, fragmented spot-market pricing and the legal treatment of direct bitcoin activity presented additional risks.
What Goldman planned
The May 2 report said Goldman expected to trade listed bitcoin futures for clients as principal and develop a non-deliverable forward tied to bitcoin. A non-deliverable forward is an over-the-counter contract that settles its gain or loss in conventional currency rather than delivering the referenced asset.
The bank had hired Justin Schmidt to lead its digital-asset markets work. Yared attributed the initiative to client interest in holding bitcoin or bitcoin futures as an alternative store of value. Her comments were measured rather than promotional: the report described skepticism inside the bank and an assessment that bitcoin was neither a conventional currency nor simply a fraud.
No firm start date was announced on May 2, 2018. The report said activity was expected to begin within weeks. Any move into physical bitcoin remained conditional on regulatory approval and a workable method for managing custody and other operational risks.
The regulated bridge to bitcoin
Goldman’s proposed entry depended on infrastructure built during the preceding months. CME Group had designed a cash-settled bitcoin futures contract based on the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate. CME said that benchmark aggregated bitcoin-dollar trading from Bitstamp, GDAX, itBit and Kraken to produce a reference price as of 4 p.m. London time.
That structure separated the futures contract from delivery of bitcoin itself. Clients could obtain or hedge price exposure through a regulated derivatives venue, while settlement occurred in cash. Goldman’s planned forward would extend that model into a customized bilateral contract.
An official Commodity Futures Trading Commission transcript also shows that Yared participated for Goldman Sachs in the agency’s January 31, 2018 Market Risk Advisory Committee discussion of bitcoin futures, clearing and risk controls. That earlier record confirms Goldman’s institutional engagement with the market’s plumbing. It does not, by itself, prove that the May trading plan had launched.
Regulation remained unsettled
The institutional announcement arrived on the same date that SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce delivered a cryptocurrency policy speech in Los Angeles. Peirce emphasized that the remarks represented her views, not those of the Commission.
She argued that an asset’s function, rather than its token label, should guide legal analysis. In her assessment, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin were unlikely to be securities on their own, while some initial coin offerings could constitute securities offerings under the Howey test. She rejected a blanket classification for every token and called for clearer communication between innovators and regulators.
That distinction helps explain the route Goldman selected. Bitcoin derivatives fit within an established commodities and futures framework, whereas direct ownership raised separate questions involving custody, market integrity and regulatory authority.
What was—and was not—established
The verified development on May 2, 2018 was a reported plan supported by attributable comments from a Goldman executive. It was not evidence that Goldman had begun spot trading, accumulated bitcoin, opened the service to retail customers or resolved digital-asset custody.
The surviving records also do not establish that the announcement caused a particular bitcoin price movement. This reconstruction therefore makes no claim about event-day returns, trading volume, open interest or market capitalization. Its significance was institutional: a major Wall Street dealer was preparing to place bitcoin-linked exposure inside familiar derivatives, risk-management and client-service systems while keeping the underlying asset outside the bank’s initial operating perimeter.
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