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Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

bloomberg.com

41–50 of 118 posts

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#41
post #25

I have been trading crypto for 5 years now and it is a wet dream for rogue traders. There was a myriad of stories about traders and even banks that tried to pull of some shady statretgy in the stocks markets that the SEC shut down, those same strategies seem to be fair game in the crypto world, you just have to have pockets that are deep enough. My point is that if you are smart and think you can beat or even keep up…

I've always laughed watching the cultist end of the crypto community up on their imaginary moral high horses talking about how much "better" crypto was than banks and regulated markets.. given the fact that crypto markets basically represent all of the shady shit manipulators in regulated markets would love to do but can't.

+1. It's laughable. Segregated accounts, position limits, circuit breakers, margin limits, spreads across duration to reduce risk, etc are all GOOD things. The counter party risk in the exchanges right now is HUGE in the bitcoin world. Pass on that.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearing the trades means both buying and selling.

So they are the market maker?

No more like a broker. When you buy stocks through your broker, all the broker does is to pass on your order to the exchange, and to report when it was executed. The broker doesn’t take any risk, other than you not making a payment after you gave the buy order.

If the broker was a market maker, he would keep an inventory of that stock and your order would be filled by the broker directly. Who would then report and clear the transaction on the exchange.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's where Goldman would net off trades between their own clients, effectively acting as an exchange for their clients using the prices on the official exchange. They say in the article they won't act as market-makers or hold their own positions. That means they won't perform their usual capacity for clients, where they act as middleman between the exchange and their own clients. ie they won't make a price for their…

It’s smart because holding BTC in a Tulip-bulb crisis is insanely risky. This current crisis is due to elastic demand based on short-lived, fashionable attention of a tiny currency, whereas common currencies are more inelastic because their usage and scale lends themselves to more stability. The value will collapse when people lose interest or when large institutions get over the mania of New Relationship Energy. Dur…

I can't see shorting it outright without being wheeled out on a stretcher. Options will be the best play to safely express a bearish position with asymmetric risk/reward assuming they aren't priced to insanely due to IV. Still at least you know your risk.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#45
post #35

> In fact, the Bloomberg system is a blockchain, just instead of having the users control it, we control it, but it has all the attributes of that. Thus proving that whatever he thinks about Bitcoin, Michael Bloomberg is clueless about the blockchain.

Actually they might be running a separate Blockchain to manage their side. Similar to https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum which uses raft con sensus. He is being confusing though and you could be right so...

They are not running a separate Blockchain and equating their system with how Blockchain works is quite misleading. I work in finance and use Bloomberg's system daily. It's essentially an online data provider/analytics platform running in a terminal-like environment. I don't think they would sneak in a private Blockchain without clients knowing about it. Even if they would, what for?

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s smart because holding BTC in a Tulip-bulb crisis is insanely risky. This current crisis is due to elastic demand based on short-lived, fashionable attention of a tiny currency, whereas common currencies are more inelastic because their usage and scale lends themselves to more stability. The value will collapse when people lose interest or when large institutions get over the mania of New Relationship Energy. Dur…

I can't see shorting it outright without being wheeled out on a stretcher. Options will be the best play to safely express a bearish position with asymmetric risk/reward assuming they aren't priced to insanely due to IV. Still at least you know your risk.

[deleted]

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#47
post #35

> In fact, the Bloomberg system is a blockchain, just instead of having the users control it, we control it, but it has all the attributes of that. Thus proving that whatever he thinks about Bitcoin, Michael Bloomberg is clueless about the blockchain.

Why can't they run an internal blockchain?

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they might be running a separate Blockchain to manage their side. Similar to https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum which uses raft con sensus. He is being confusing though and you could be right so...

They are not running a separate Blockchain and equating their system with how Blockchain works is quite misleading. I work in finance and use Bloomberg's system daily. It's essentially an online data provider/analytics platform running in a terminal-like environment. I don't think they would sneak in a private Blockchain without clients knowing about it. Even if they would, what for?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the IT department explained to him that they are using some kind of consensus based mechanism (zookeeper, etcd, consul etc), that works just like a blockchain, to manage the bloomberg infrastructure. He then goes on tv and tells the world that bloomberg is using The Blockchain. Just wild speculation but its seems plausible to me.

Edit: a quick google lead me to Bloomberg's consul deployment cookbook: https://github.com/bloomberg/consul-cluster-cookbook/blob/ma...

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#49

>"The decision to clear client trades will be made on a case-by-case basis, the person said." Could someone say what "clearing the trades" mean here?

Why don't their clients trade directly on the exchange? What value does GS provide here?

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#50
post #36
post #9

I wonder what Jamie Dimon thinks about this! Funnily enough, my sources tell me JP will be in on the futures contracts as well. What hypocrisy!

He was talking about market making, not clearing. The bank doesn’t really take a principal risk on clearing. It does on market making.

The way I saw it, he was condemning bitcoin in general, not market making on bitcoin specifically. Even clearing has risk - admittedly not market risk, but significant amounts of credit risk (that's why people pay for it).
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