According to a news release on Thursday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the 153-year-old Wall Street investment firm, is introducing a service to explain, classify, and increase transparency in the digital currency markets for institutional investors looking to invest in the asset class.
Goldman Sachs, MSCI Inc., Coin Metrics Inc., and the financial services company Datonomy collaborated on the Datonomy tool.
To help clients assess the larger cryptocurrency market, including Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and smart contract platforms, Datonomy categorizes coins and tokens according to their intended application.
“We firmly believe a consistent and standardized framework for the classification of digital assets is essential to support investors’ ability to evaluate the market,” said Stéphane Mattatia, Managing Director, Global Head of Derivatives Licensing and Thematic Indexes at MSCI, in a statement.
The action is a part of a larger trend of institutional use of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. In March, New York-based cryptocurrency investment firm Galaxy Digital Holdings helped Goldman Sachs sell a Bitcoin non-deliverable option, a Bitcoin derivative settled in cash, making it the first major U.S. bank to conduct an over-the-counter cryptocurrency transaction.
By providing its first loan backed by Bitcoin in March, the bank joined the ranks of other cryptocurrency-friendly financial institutions including Silvergate Capital Corp.
Despite the general bear market in cryptocurrencies, the biggest asset manager in the world, BlackRock Inc., said in August that it was launching a Bitcoin trust for institutional clients in the U.S.
