GOLDMAN APPLIED FOR BITCOIN. ETF, THE LAST FORT ON WALL STREET

Original author: Cake, Deep tide TechFlow

CNBC INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS CONFERENCE, NEW YORK, 12 SEPTEMBER 2017。

Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stood on the stage and threw a sentence at the entire fund manager: "bitcoin is a scam, better than a tulip bubble." Whoever traded bitcoin at Morgan Chase, I immediately dismissed him for two reasons: violation of the law and stupidity."

Bitcoin fell 2% that day, reporting $4106。

Nine years later, on April 14, 2026, Goldman Sachs Bitcoin. Six days ago, Morgan Stanley's spot bitcoin ETF (MSBT) was just put on the market at $34 million for the first day of the day at a rate of 0.14 per cent。

On the same day, Kevin Warsh, the Fed's nominated president, submitted a 69-page financial disclosure document, which includes investments in Polymarket, Solana, the Platform for the Development of the Ethers, Tenderly and the Bitcoin Lightning Network Enterprise, Flashnet。

Within a week, three things happen simultaneously。

Wall Street's bitcoin attitude, from "this is a scam" to "we make our own product for sale", took nine years。

WHAT'S GOLDMAN SACHS SELLING

Let's start with a detail that the market ignored:GOLDMAN SACHS' APPLICATION IS NOT FOR SPOT BITCOIN ETF。

It is applying for an ETF "prior-benefit" with a core strategy of charged call. In short, the Fund holds the share of the spot bitcoin ETF (mainly of the IBIT in Belet), while selling the right to an increase in options, charging the right to options, and periodically distributing it to investors. Selling options cover between 40% and 100%。

What does that mean? If the bitcoin goes up, you can only make a fraction; if the bitcoin crosses or a small increase, you make a lot more than the pure holding of the bitcoin because of the extra income from the options。

Goldman Sachs chose this product pattern, which accurately exposed the image of its clients: not those who want 10 times more than bitcoin, but those who manage multi-billion-dollar agency-set funds. This money requires a reason to enter Bitcoin, which cannot be a "belief" and must be a "return rate"。

GOLDMAN SACHS' ETF IS ESSENTIALLY SAYING THAT BITCOIN FLUCTUATIONS ARE IN THEMSELVES A REAL REALIZABLE ASSET. YOU DON'T NEED TO GAMBLE. YOU JUST HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THE MARKET IS ACTIVE ENOUGH TO MAKE MONEY。

This idea is the same as the BITA that Belet is about to launch. BITA is also a coverted call policy, and it turns bitcoin fluctuations into monthly red. The difference is that Belet has an IBIT, a $55 billion giant base for liquidity support, while Goldman Sachs chooses not to hold Bitcoin directly, circumventing regulation by indirectly holding a spot ETF share by a Cayman Islands subsidiary。

THE TWO WALL STREET GIANTS, ALMOST SIMULTANEOUSLY, LOCKING THEIR EYES ON THE SAME PRODUCT TRACK, SEEM TO POINT TO ONE THING: BITCOIN’S REAL ETF WAR IS OVER, AND THE NEXT WAR IS “WHO CAN PACKAGE BITCOIN AS A PRODUCT THAT TRADITIONAL MANAGERS UNDERSTAND.”。

From buying someone else's product to making their own product: Goldman Sachs' nine years of turning around

The change in Goldman Sachs' attitude to encrypted money, as seen in the length of the timeline, is one of the most dramatic shifts on Wall Street。

In 2021, Goldman Sachs reopened the encrypted currency trading counter and began providing futures and options in bitcoin to clients. At the time, the whole industry was using the phrase "We focus on block chains, we don't care about bitcoin" to express the ambiguity of "I want to touch but I can't say it."。

BY THE END OF 2024 AND THE BEGINNING OF 2025, GOLDMAN SACHS' 13F FILE BEGAN TO APPEAR. BY THE FOURTH QUARTER OF 2024, GOLDMAN SACHS HELD A SHARE OF US$ 1.570 BILLION BITCOIN ETF, OF WHICH US$ 12.70 BILLION WAS IN BELET ' S IBIT AND US$ 288 MILLION IN FOUDA ' S FBT, AN INCREASE OF 121 PER CENT OVER THE PREVIOUS QUARTER。

By the fourth quarter of 2025, 13F disclosed that Goldman Sachs indirectly held approximately 13,741 bitcoins through various spot bitcoin ETFs, with a market value of about $17.1 billion. Even more striking, it holds approximately $1 billion in ETF, $153 million in XRP ETF and $108 million in Solana ETF. CEO David Solomon was also invited to address the World Liberty Finance Forum。

From buying other people's products to selling them to others, Goldman Sachs left for less than two years。

Morgan Stanley: 16,000 finance advisors are the biggest weapon

Morgan Stanley's rhythm is faster and more radical。

MSBT was listed on April 8th in Arca, New York, and became the first spot bitcoin ETF to be issued directly by large commercial banks in the history of the United States. The rate was 0.14 per cent, 11 basis points cheaper than the IBIT in Beled, and the price battle started as soon as the market came up。

The ETF analyst from Bloomberg, Eric Balchunas, rated MSBT's first day performance as "the top 1 per cent of all ETF issues" and projected asset management to reach $5 billion in one year。

BUT THE REAL WEAPONS OF MSBT ARE NOT TARIFFS, BUT DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS. MORGAN STANLEY HAS 16,000 WEALTH MANAGEMENT ADVISERS WHO MANAGE $9.3 TRILLION IN CUSTOMER ASSETS. PREVIOUSLY, THE CONSULTANTS HAD BEEN ABLE TO RECOMMEND ONLY A THIRD PARTY, BITCOIN ETF, AND COULD NOW BE TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM THEIR HOME PRODUCTS。

More importantly, Morgan Stanley has advised clients to configure 2 to 4 per cent of the portfolio in encrypted currency. When a $9.3 trillion platform provides a proposal for such a configuration, even if only a small percentage of clients implement it, the funds flowing into the encryption market are astronomical。

Morgan Stanley also plans to open up spot transactions of bitcoin, Ethera and Solana through E*Trade in the first half of 2026, and has submitted applications for the Ethera and Solana trust. It's not a test water. It's a full spread。

Coinbase Joint Agency Operations CEO Brett Tejpaul says very precisely:This marked the second wave of adoption of digital assets。I don't know

THE FIRST WAVE WAS APPROVED IN 2024 BY THE SPOT ETF, WITH FUNDS FLOWING THROUGH ETF CHANNELS; THE SECOND WAVE WAS WHEN BANKS MADE THEIR OWN PRODUCTS, EMBEDDING ENCRYPTED ASSETS INTO THE FULL CHAIN OF TRADITIONAL WEALTH MANAGEMENT。

Secrets in the 69-page paper: the next Fed Chairman voted Polymark and Solana

The most interesting news this week is probably not Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but Kevin Walsh's 69-page financial disclosure。

Warsh is the next Federal Reserve Chairman nominated by Trump to replace Jerome Powell, who will be retiring in May. His 69-page OGE 278e form, submitted on April 14, contained an impressive list of investments: investments in the ITA L2 Blast network, investments in the de-centre forecasting market Polymark, shares in the Bitcoin Lightning Network entrepreneurship company Flashnet, investments in Tenderly (the platform for the development of the ETA), and prior investments in Bitwise (which manages a firm that manages the management of the ETF。

Through the DCM Investments and AVF series of fund structures, Warsh has extensive layouts in the areas of DeFi lending, decentralised derivatives, L1 and L2 networks, forecast markets and Bitcoin payment infrastructure。

While most of these warehouses are small (under the OGE rules, unspecified items mean a value of less than $1,000), and Warsh has undertaken to clear all the warehouses once confirmed, the signals are extremely significant: Rather than passively buying bitcoin in the voucher account, those who are about to take charge of US monetary policy are actively looking for and investing in the most advanced agreements and infrastructure in encrypted ecology。

Warsh has previously publicly stated that Bitcoin is a “important asset” and a “good cop of policy” that can signal when the Fed lags behind the inflation curve. Michael Saylor predicts that he will be the first pro-bitcoin Fed president。

If it was in 2017 when Jamie Dimon said, "bitcoin was the afternoon of the scam, it'd probably be used as a psychosis。

Wall Street has no faith, only books

Look at these three things together, the picture is clear。

Wall Street never does anything because of faith. It does everything for one reason: profit. When these institutions act collectively, they see not the philosophical meaning of bitcoin, but rather a class of assets with an annual turnover of trillions of dollars, a constant volatility of more than 60 per cent, a growing maturity of options markets, and management fees, turnover commissions and structured product premiums that can be charged around this asset class。

What does that mean for the family

IN THE SHORT TERM, MORE ETFS MEAN MORE INTENSE TARIFF WARFARE. MSBT'S 0.14% HAS LOWERED THE INDUSTRY'S BOTTOM LINE, AND GOLDMAN SACHS AND BELED'S EARNINGS-TYPE ETF WILL FURTHER COMPETE FOR CONSERVATIVE FUNDS THAT "WANTED TO GAIN BUT DID NOT WANT TO SUFFER FULL VOLATILITY." BITCOIN'S FINANCIAL ENTRY IS BEING WIDENED。

In the medium term, when Wall Street began to build revenue-type products around bitcoin, it was actually redefining bitcoin from "speculating assets" to "other income assets". This will attract a large number of old-age pensions, insurance funds and university endowment funds that were previously deterred by "too much volatility". Once the money comes in, it won't get out。

In the long run, when Polymarket and Solana were in the portfolio of the Fed's president's candidate, when two of Wall Street's most arrogant investors competed for bitcoin ETF productsThe question of whether bitcoin is a legal asset no longer needs to be answeredI don't know。

The question becomes: Whose side are you on in this new order

In 2017, Jamie Dimon said, "I'll fire a bitcoin worker." In 2026, his colleagues were fighting to sell Bitcoin to every customer who entered the bank door。

Wall Street has no faith, only books。When the numbers are big enough, any faith changesI don't know。

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