At first, Goldman Sachs’ (GS) purchase of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer for about $2 billion doesn’t appear to have much to do with cryptocurrencies.
However, the Wall Street banking giant’s purchase of Innovator Capital has implications that may shake up the entire crypto industry, primarily the ETF sector. That market today is worth 190 billion dollars, but spot bitcoin The ETF market alone is projected to grow to $3 trillion by 2033.
When the deal was announced, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said in a statement that “active ETFs are dynamic, transformative and one of the fastest-growing segments in today’s public investment landscape” and “by acquiring Innovator, Goldman Sachs will expand access to modern, world-class investment products.” Bruce Bond, CEO of Innovator, said: “Goldman Sachs has a long history of discerning emerging trends and important direction changes within the asset management industry.”
The statements speak volumes about how Goldman sees the ETF industry evolving: building a truly “modern” platform that will invest in emerging trends, based on investor demand. This could eventually include digital assets.
Because? Just ask BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, which has more than $13.4 trillion in assets under management. The company manages more than 1,400 different ETFs around the world and, of all of these funds, according to one of its executives, bitcoin ETFs have become the company’s most profitable product line.
As a reminder, Goldman Sachs already acts as an authorized participant for major bitcoin spot ETFs, including those from BlackRock and Grayscale, making them easy to trade on a daily basis. And while Innovator primarily focuses on defined outcome ETFs, it has responded to growing demand for cryptocurrency exposure with structured ETFs like the Innovator Uncapped Bitcoin 20 Floor ETF (QBF), which provides investors with exposure to bitcoin through a risk management strategy.
“This not only gives them one-time ETF manufacturing scale, but also opens up a pre-built, compliant channel to drive buffered exposure to bitcoin through private banks, RIAs and wealth platforms that crypto-native issuers have difficulty accessing,” Anna Tutova, founder of AI Crypto Minds and advisor to family offices, told CoinDesk.
Simply put, cryptocurrencies are becoming another Wall Street product that traditional financial institutions want exposure to as investors demand new and innovative products and asset classes. ETFs are becoming the distribution channel for that demand.
‘Change Bitcoin inherently’
This raises a long-standing debate about why cryptocurrency was created: to provide an alternative financial system that addresses the problems of legacy financial systems.
However, cryptocurrencies need mass adoption if they are to live up to traditional finance and government oversight. And to achieve this, it needs the same institutions, such as BlackRock, Goldman and even the governments with which it sought to compete.
“This deal pretty much sums up 2025 as the year in which governments and big players validated the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies,” said Anastasiia Bobeshko, independent strategic advisor at Web3.
And this is where many industry participants are sounding the alarm.
“Cryptocurrencies are becoming just another Wall Street investment tool, not the alternative system they were intended to be,” said Tutova of AI Crypto Minds.
Trevor Koverko, co-founder of Sapien and Polymath, echoed the sentiment, saying Goldman Sachs’ potential crypto ETF move is “good for adoption, but dangerous for the ethos.” Wall Street ETFs bring scale and liquidity, but if we stop at “number increases in brokerage accounts,” we have just rebuilt the old system with new assets. “ETFs should be the gateway, not the destination,” he told CoinDesk.
So while Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs are moving into cryptocurrencies, legitimizing the industry and preparing it for wider adoption, they may fail to maintain the original vision of cypherpunks and even Bitcoin’s mysterious founder (or founders), Satoshi Nakamoto.
“Satoshi positioned Bitcoin against corrupt systems like the banking system,” said Kadan Stadelmann, CTO of the Komodo platform.
“Now massive corporations like BlackRock and Fidelity have become dominant crypto players, inherently changing Bitcoin. It is no longer a political tool based on self-custody, but rather a financial tool for wealth preservation and diversification.”
