Digital currency exchange Coinbase has reportedly approached Goldman Sachs to lead its upcoming initial public offering — a move that could bolster the appeal of cryptocurrencies to a broader mainstream audience. Citing two sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider reported Friday that Coinbase is looking to Goldman Sachs to handle its public filing. No additional details were provided. Coinbase has for years been linked to Goldman Sachs through Fred Ehrsam, the exchange’s co-founder who previously worked at the bank as a trader. Business Insider reports that Ehrsam worked at Goldman between 2010 and 2012 before quitting to establish Coinbase …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) parabolic surge in 2020 will not hurt major traditional assets like gold, according to Goldman Sachs. One of the world’s biggest investment banks, Goldman Sachs reportedly sent a note to investors, reassuring its clients that Bitcoin does not pose an existential threat to gold, Bloomberg reports Dec. 18. “We do not see evidence that Bitcoin’s rally is cannibalizing gold’s bull market and believe the two can coexist,” the company wrote. Goldman Sachs still admitted that Bitcoin’s ongoing rally could steal some demand from gold investors, stating: “Gold’s recent underperformance versus real rates and the dollar has left some …

Goldman Sachs is reportedly one of several financial institutions to sign on to JPMorgan’s custom blockchain service — a sign that more broker-dealers were looking to take advantage of digital currencies for their repo operations. In an interview with Bloomberg, Scott Lucas, head of blockchain markets at JPMorgan, said the investment bank is already using blockchain to conduct billions of dollars worth of repurchase agreements. The bank utilizes JPM Coin, a dollar-backed stablecoin, to swap digitized U.S. Treasury bonds much more efficiently. As Bloomberg notes, JPMorgan conducted the first live trades internally utilizing its Onyx blockchain infrastructure. That was enough …

Online payments giant and Cash App owner Stripe is stepping into a new realm of financial services for vendors. Per a Wall Street Journal exclusive on Thursday, Stripe is looking to offer customers bank accounts and debit cards. However, these financial products will be limited to vendors and merchants for now. The new initiative will also involve collaboration with banking giants Goldman Sachs and Citi, which is part of a broader push from both to incorporate online business services and new technologies. In 2015, Stripe was an early payments platform to onboard Bitcoin (BTC) functionality, which it dropped three years …

Historically, traditional market analysts and old school investors tend to look at Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with a wary eye, and when crypto pundits attempt to make comparisons between the two these investors say it's an apples to oranges argument. Take, for example, Warren Buffett, who many a time has said Bitcoin is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme as it does not produce anything and therefore has no value. According to these traditionalists, comparing Bitcoin to Apple, Tesla, or a bank stock like JPMorgan is irrational as the latter employ workers, produce products, and generate revenues and dividends which …

On Friday Coinbase Inc. announced the appointment of former Google Senior Legal Director Milana McCullagh as deputy general counsel for product and commercial legal. McCullagh, who worked for more than 13 years at Google, will work across functions at Coinbase on product legal support, helping the firm to streamline legal compliance for new product launches. McCullagh's appointment is part of both a Coinbase campaign to attract legal talent that started last year, as well as a broader industry-wide movement of top-tier attorneys joining crypto firms. Between August and October, Coinbase appointed former general counsel at Dyson Ltd., Katherine Minarik, as …

Revolution Populi has released layer one of a blockchain solution that the founding team believes could be used as a clearinghouse for crypto and traditional financial transactions. The protocol iterates over the delegated proof-of-stake consensus used by EOS, which employs 21 block producers. Revolution Populi calls its consensus rdPOS, where ‘r’ stands for random. The number of block producers is increased to 63, and 21 nodes are randomly picked as block producers for each round. The team believes that this setup allows for speed while preserving sufficient decentralization. Rob Rosenthal, the company's CEO who spent 19 years at Goldman Sachs …

On Wednesday, the Chamber of Digital Commerce announced the addition of Visa, Goldman Sachs and Six Digital Exchange (SDX) to its executive committee. Mick Mulvaney, a former White House Chief of Staff and a co-founder of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus will also be joining the chamber’s board of advisors. Mulvaney left the White House in March. On the board, he will be joining a number of figures familiar to Cointelegraph’s readers, including Don Tapscott of the Blockchain Research Institute and former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, who is now with the Digital Dollar Project. Regarding the lineup of the advisory board, …

As whispers of Bitcoin’s (BTC) promised financial breakthrough failing to materialize over the last few months have continued to garner steam, the price of the premier crypto asset recently surged above the all-important $12,000 psychological threshold, only to once again slip right under. However, as part of this development, the total cap of the crypto market reached an impressive $386.4 billion, a level only attained back in 2018. That being said, a multitude of factors, such as poor investor perception and lack of regulatory direction, seems to be preventing the market from flowering as previously envisioned by many experts. In …

Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is hiring a new vice president in the Digital Assets team within its Global Markets Division in London. According to a recent job posting on the investment firm’s website, the new VP will work with the Digital Assets team in “defining and executing Goldman Sachs’ distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain efforts firmwide, including any potential initiatives in the cryptocurrency space.” The role requires that any applicants be able to identify opportunities where blockchain and DLT digital assets can add value. The current global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs is Mathew McDermott, who …

In a Cointelegraph interview, director of IBM financial services and digital assets, Nitin Gaur, shared how the technology company is helping financial institutions to capitalize on the DeFi movement. Gaur — the author of Blockchain for Business — says it is essential that banks understand and embrace DeFi space. Otherwise, he says it could eventually disrupt their entire business model: “I think that the financial institutions should understand it because it has the potential to eventually sort of take over and subside the business elements of existing business models. And that's one reason why a bank should do it.” DeFi …

The United States’ failure to agree on Coronavirus stimulus shows that the dollar is “funny money” and endorses Bitcoin (BTC), says Cameron Winklevoss. In a tweet on Aug. 6, the Gemini exchange co-founder delivered a damning appraisal of the lack of progress in Washington to deliver more financial aid. A “wake-up call and endorsement of Bitcoin” Talks between Democrats and Republicans were “on the brink of collapse,” CNN reported on Friday, as the two sides’ desired stimulus totals differed by several trillion dollars. For Winklevoss, the idea that politicians could plan for the same goal with wildly varying sums of …