Goldman Investing in Crypto Firms in Wake of FTX Crisis

Goldman Sachs is looking to buy cryptocurrency companies as the sector reels from FTX’s collapse

The fall of that crypto exchange last month has underlined the need for more trusted players in the industry and has given big banks a chance to find new business, Mathew McDermott, Goldman’s head of digital assets, told Reuters in an interview published Tuesday (Dec. 6).

“We do see some really interesting opportunities, priced much more sensibly,” he said.

McDermott told the news outlet his bank was doing due diligence on several crypto companies it wanted to purchase or invest in, without offering further details.

FTX sought Chapter 11 protection last month following a collapse that has continued to spiral outward, opening up regulatory investigations and leading other companies to bankruptcy or to hold off on going public.

“It’s definitely set the market back in terms of sentiment, there’s absolutely no doubt of that,” McDermott said. “FTX was a poster child in many parts of the ecosystem. But to reiterate, the underlying technology continues to perform.”

PYMNTS argued as much last week in our look at the future of cryptocurrency as a payment method in the aftermath of FTX’s downfall.

“It bears repeating that FTX is not, by any means, a direct stand-in for crypto, and it is unfair to paint the entire industry with the scarlet letter of the exchange’s failure,” we wrote.

“Despite the echo chamber of negative headlines surrounding crypto, the Web3-grounded currency solution is still viewed as an important and emergent, bleeding-edge space — particularly within commerce.”

And experts we’ve spoken with have argued that the problems at FTX had more to do with a lack of oversight at the company and financial wrongdoing.

“In this case, it wasn’t a crypto failure. It was a very old-fashioned fraud… The exchange failed due to stealing and lying. And we already have laws against that,” Hanna Halaburda, associate professor at NYU Stern School of Business, said in an interview with PYMNTS last month.