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Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, chief investment officer of Goldman Sachs<\/a> Wealth Management, told the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a> in an interview this week that despite all the recent hype around Bitcoin ETFs her firm isn\u2019t buying into it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not believers in crypto,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do not think it is an investment asset class.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you cannot assign a value, then how can you be bullish or bearish?\u201d she added. The crux of her disdain for cryptocurrencies is the difficult task of valuing them, as they don\u2019t produce earnings, dividends, or cash flow, the Journal<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n Having guided thousands of wealth advisers, clients, and traders over the past 23 years in her role at the high-profile investment bank, she told the newspaper that clients are aware of the company\u2019s anti-crypto stance and refrain from seeking counsel for investing in the space, despite Bitcoin reaching an all-time high of $73,737 last month, according to CoinGecko data<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mossavar-Rahmani said she sees crypto as simply a speculative investment and doesn\u2019t see merit in unregulated markets: \u201cThe rule of law and systems of checks and balances matter.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mossavar-Rahmani\u2019s stance is at odds with others in traditional finance, who are incorporating\u2014albeit slowly\u2014crypto in their offerings, and in contradiction of rumors that Goldman could be more crypto-friendly behind the scenes.<\/p>\n \u201cThough Goldman Sachs might not have a developed view of Bitcoin or digital assets as long-term investments in portfolios, they are certainly engaging with the ecosystem from an infrastructure perspective,\u201d said Matt Ballensweig, managing director and head of BitGo\u2019s Go Network, in reference to the bank\u2019s digital asset research unit.<\/p>\n The bank\u2019s global head of digital assets, Mathew McDermott,\u00a0told Reuters<\/a>\u00a0in December that he expects a \u201csignificant uptick\u201d in trading volumes of blockchain-based assets within the next year or two, and has also seen increasing client interest in crypto derivatives trading.<\/p>\n \u201cRegardless of view, large banks are going to have to service their client needs, and we\u2019re seeing that unfold now,\u201d added Ballensweig.<\/p>\n Since the Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January, two of the trading products have been issued by big-name asset managers from Wall Street: BlackRock\u2019s<\/a> iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Fidelity\u2019s<\/a> Wise Original Bitcoin Fund (FBTC).\u00a0<\/p>\n Due to the issuers\u2019 access to mainstream investors and established customer bases, both funds are leading the fiercely competitive Bitcoin ETF race, with the funds amassing almost $60 billion in assets under management so far, according to BitMEX data as of Monday. Of this, IBIT and FBTC have accumulated over $17 billion and $10 billion, respectively\u2014with the latter being the fastest ETF in history to reach this milestone.<\/p>\n Moreover, while Mossavar-Rahmani may publicly condemn investing in crypto, in January CoinDesk reported<\/a> that Goldman Sachs<\/a> was in talks to be an authorized participant (AP) for Grayscale and BlackRock<\/a> ETFs, a role that involves creating and redeeming ETF shares to ensure the products trade closely aligned with their underlying assets.<\/p>\n Other Wall Street players have lined up to fill this role.<\/p>\n BlackRock\u2019s AP roster includes quantitative high-speed trader Jane Street and JPMorgan, SEC filings<\/a> show. Fellow ETF issuer Valkyrie has also teamed up with Jane Street and Cantor Fitzgerald to fufill AP roles, another filing<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, that same month, the Nasdaq<\/a>, CBOE<\/a>, and NYSE Arca all filed 19b-4s for SEC approval to allow for the trading of related options, according to notices on their websites.\u00a0On top of this, in February, CoinDesk reported<\/a> that investment bank Morgan Stanley<\/a> is allegedly looking into adding spot Bitcoin ETFs<\/a> to its brokerage platform. The Wall Street behemoth is said to be carrying out due diligence on the products, according to sources close to the matter. If approved, Morgan Stanley<\/a> would be the first among large registered investment advisor (RIA) networks and broker-dealer platforms to list the ETFs, potentially opening the floodgates for the likes of Merrill Lynch or Wells Fargo<\/a> to turbocharge inflows.<\/p>\n \u201cThese networks and platforms are the addressable market for Bitcoin that the ETFs were always supposed to open up. We know of other big wire houses or advisor platforms that have approved some of these ETFs for trading already,\u201d Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI think eventually the vast majority of platforms, if not all, will approve these things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nElsewhere on the street<\/h2>\n