Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse’s crypto chiefs have doubled down on the benefits of digital assets in the wake of the European Union voting through a sweeping package of crypto regulations last week.
Mathew McDermott, head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, said the US bank has seen tremendous growth in the digital assets space.
“There’s a large number of reports about positivity on tokenisation and what that can do for the ecosystem,” McDermott said on 25 April at the City Week conference in London. He was speaking alongside KKR’s blockchain lead Xiao-Xiao Zhu and Credit Suisse’s digital assets chief Previn Singh.
He cited a February report from the European Parliamentary Research Service, which estimated the combined benefit of EU crypto and distributed ledger regulations at €33bn annually across the bloc.
“That’s a monstrous amount of incremental value,” said McDermott. “And we now actually have regulations.”
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His comments come days after the EU ratified its landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, in a move experts say will pile pressure on UK and US watchdogs.
Singh said the vote brings “much needed certainty” to the sector in the region, citing factors such as the passportable nature of the rulebook across the bloc as benefits of the new laws.
“Common standards are being developed, being used today… It’s not just regulations, it is common standards and common ways of working among ourselves.”
“The way things are going with regulators is extremely positive,” he added.
Goldman Sachs in particular has taken steps toward tokenisation in recent months. It was one of a syndicate of four banks to distribute a $120m tokenised green bond for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in February, along with the Bank of China, Credit Agricole and HSBC.
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The bond used Goldman’s in-house digital asset platform, which runs on a permissioned blockchain.
Earlier in the day at City Week, Abrdn said it will likely trade cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin at some point in future as it pushes ahead with its existing work in tokenisation and digital securities.
Russell Barlow, head of alternatives at the FTSE 100 asset manager, said: “Would we consider trading crypto? I’d be foolish to say no.”
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