Goldman Sachs (GS) buying an exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer for around $2 billion doesn’t appear to have much to do with crypto at first.
However, the Wall Street banking giant’s purchase of Innovator Capital has implications that can shake up the entire crypto industry, primarily the ETF industry. This market is worth $190 billion today, but spot bitcoin The ETF market alone is expected to reach $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 significant directional changes within the asset management industry. »
These 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 potentially include digital assets.
For what? Just ask BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, managing more than $13.4 trillion in assets. The company manages more than 1,400 different ETFs around the world, and among all 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 serves as an authorized participant for major bitcoin spot ETFs, including those from BlackRock and Grayscale, facilitating their daily trading. And while Innovator primarily focuses on defined outcome ETFs, it has responded to the growing demand for exposure to cryptocurrencies with structured ETFs such as the Innovator Uncapped Bitcoin 20 Floor ETF (QBF), which provides investors with exposure to bitcoin through a risk management strategy.
“Not only does this give them ETF manufacturing scale in one fell swoop, but it also opens up a pre-built, compliant channel to push buffered exposure to Bitcoin through private banks, RIAs, and wealth management platforms that crypto-native issuers have difficulty accessing,” Anna Tutova, founder of AI Crypto Minds and advisor to family offices, told CoinDesk.
Simply put, crypto is becoming another Wall Street product that traditional financial institutions want exposure to as investors demand innovative new products and asset classes. ETFs are becoming the distribution channel for this demand.
“Inherently changing Bitcoin”
This raises a long-standing debate about why cryptocurrency was created: to provide an alternative financial system that solves the problems of traditional financial systems.
However, crypto needs mass adoption if it is to compete with traditional finance and government surveillance. And to get there, he needs the very institutions, like BlackRock, Goldman and even governments, that he intended to compete with.
“This agreement pretty much sums up 2025 as the year when the legitimacy of crypto was validated by governments and big players,” said Anastasiia Bobeshko, independent strategic advisor to Web3.
And this is where many players in the sector are sounding the alarm.
“Crypto is becoming just another Wall Street investment tool, and not the alternative system it claims to be,” said Tutova of AI Crypto Minds.
Trevor Koverko, co-founder of Sapien and Polymath, echoed this sentiment, saying Goldman Sachs’ potential crypto ETF move is “good for adoption, dangerous for ethics.” Wall Street ETFs provide scale and liquidity, but if we stop at “increasing the number of brokerage accounts,” we have just rebuilt the old system on new assets. ETFs should be the on-ramp, not the destination,” he told CoinDesk.
So while Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs push further into crypto, legitimizing the industry and preparing it for further adoption, they might not be living up to 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 Komodo Platform.
“Today, large corporations like BlackRock and Fidelity have become dominant players in crypto, inherently changing Bitcoin. It is no longer a policy tool based on self-custody, but rather a financial tool for wealth preservation and diversification.”
