Aaron Brown, Columnist

Goldman Gives the Blockchain Revolution a Home

The bank’s digital-assets platform may not gain traction, but we will increasingly trade financial instruments using the technology that underpins Bitcoin.

November 22, 2024 at 10:30 AM UTC

By Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown is a former head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management. He is also an active crypto investor, and has venture capital investments and advisory ties with crypto firms. He is the author of the soon-to-be-released "Wrong Number."

Time for change.
Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

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Most important advances in technology occur when someone combines a variety of innovations in different fields in a commercially successful way. Bitcoin is an exception, a revolutionary advance that people have spent the last 15 years cannibalizing for parts to use in other projects. It’s as if someone built the first automobile from scratch and then left it for others to pick apart: the engine, transmission and steering mechanism all separated and used in other devices.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. offers the latest example. The bank recently announced plans to spin out its digital-assets platform into a new company for large financial firms to create, trade and settle financial instruments using the technology that underpins Bitcoin. Bitcoin introduced the world to permissionless public distributed ledgers with blockchain, but Goldman is not interested in either the permissionless or public parts of the idea.