Interest with respect to options trading has grown with time. In fact, options have now become one of the most popular vehicles for traders. More so, because their price usually moves fast, hastening up the process of making, or losing money. Given the complex nature of options trading, non-experienced traders usually try to stay out of the arena.
Simply put, an option is a contract that gives the buyer the right—but not the obligation—to buy (in the case of a call) or sell (in the case of a put) the underlying asset at a specific price on or before a certain date.
Owing to the growing interest, one of the world’s largest derivatives exchange groups, Chicago Mercantile, offered trading options on micro Bitcoin and Ethereum futures quite recently. In what is the latest development, investment bank, and financial services company Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is the latest one to jump onto the crypto options bandwagon.
Ethereum: More of an investable asset class?
As per a recent Bloomberg report, Goldman Sachs is planning to offer over-the-counter Ethereum options trading and has seen growing interest from clients in the second-largest digital currency, said Andrei Kazantsev, global head of crypto trading at the bank.
The Wall Street giant is planning to launch cash-settled Ether options “in due course,” he said Tuesday during a Goldman client webinar. Here it is interesting to note that, Goldman traded its first over-the-counter Bitcoin options last month.
Over-the-counter options transactions are typically larger trades and are negotiated privately. Ether has a market value of $404 billion, making it the largest coin behind Bitcoin at $862 billion.
At Goldman, client conversations have increasingly shifted to Ether, which is now seen as “more of an investable asset class,” George Lewin-Smith, an associate on the bank’s digital-assets team, said during the panel.
Notably, Goldman still doesn’t offer spot crypto trading, but it provides access to European and Canadian exchange-traded products that can be used as a proxy, according to Kazantsev.
Well, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have been able to remain darlings of institutional investors, and as long as mainstream financial organizations like Goldman provide their customers with exposure to crypto-centric products, the adoption curve is set to head up north.