Goldman Sachs ( GS ) buying an exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer for about $2 billion doesn’t seem to have much to do with crypto at first.
However, the Wall Street banking giant’s purchase of Innovator Capital has implications that could shake the entire crypto industry, primarily the ETF sector. That market is worth $190 billion today, but mock bitcoin The ETF market alone is expected to grow to $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 of 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 important shifts in direction within the asset management industry.”
The comments speak volumes for how Goldman sees the ETF industry evolving: building a truly “modern” platform that will invest in emerging trends, based on investor demand. This could eventually include digital assets.
Why? Just ask BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, which has more than $13.4 trillion in assets under management. The firm manages over 1,400 different ETFs globally, and out of all these funds, bitcoin ETFs have become the firm’s most profitable product line, according to one of its executives.
As a reminder, Goldman Sachs already acts as an authorized participant for major spot bitcoin ETFs, including those from BlackRock and Grayscale, facilitating their day-to-day trading. And while Innovator primarily focuses on defined-income ETFs, it has responded to the growing demand for crypto exposure with structured ETFs such as the Innovator Uncapped Bitcoin 20 Floor ETF (QBF), which gives investors exposure to bitcoin through a risk-managed strategy.
“Not only does this give them ETF production scale at once, but it also opens up a pre-engineered, compliant channel to push buffered bitcoin exposure through private banks, RIAs and wealth platforms that crypto-native issuers have difficulty accessing,” said Anna Tutova, AI Crypto Minds founder and family office advisor.
In short, crypto is becoming another Wall Street product that traditional financial institutions want to gain exposure to as investors demand new, innovative products and asset classes. ETFs are becoming the distribution channel for that demand.
‘Changing the nature of Bitcoin’
This raises a long-standing debate about why cryptocurrency was created: to provide an alternative financial system that solves the problems of older financial systems.
However, crypto needs mass adoption if it is to stand toe-to-toe with traditional financial and government controls. And to do that, it needs the institutions themselves, such as BlackRock, Goldman, and even the governments with which it had to compete.
“This agreement pretty much sums up 2025 as the year when the legitimacy of crypto has been validated by governments and big players,” said Anastasiia Bobeshko, an independent Web3 strategic advisor.
And this is where many industry participants sound the alarm.
“Crypto will become just another investment tool on Wall Street, not the alternative system it set out to be,” said Tutova of AI Crypto Minds.
Trevor Koverko, a co-founder of Sapien and Polymath, echoed the sentiment, saying Goldman Sachs’ potential crypto-ETF move is “good for adoption, dangerous for ethos.” Wall Street ETFs bring scale plus liquidity, but if we stop at ‘the number goes up in brokerage accounts’, we have just rebuilt the old system on new assets. ETFs should be on the ramp, not the destination,” he told CoinDesk.
So while Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs are pushing further into crypto, legitimizing the industry and preparing it for further adoption, it may not be able to sustain the original vision of the cypherpunks and even Bitcoin’s mysterious founder (or founders), Satoshi Nakamoto.
“Satoshi positioned Bitcoin against corrupt systems like the banking system,” said Kadan Stadelmann, Komodo Platform CTO.
“Now, massive companies like BlackRock and Fidelity have become dominant crypto players, changing the very nature of Bitcoin. It is no longer a political tool based on self-sufficiency, but rather a financial tool for wealth preservation and diversification.”
