Goldman Sachs is dealing with bitcoin futures, again.

Reuters reported on March. 1 that Goldman Sachs will restart bitcoin futures trading for its customers after previously halting the service in 2018. Per the report, the bank will start offering futures contracts and non-deliverable forwards starting next week.

Bitcoin's recognition by financial service giants and institutional investors is rapidly growing, with new capital injections pushing the cryptocurrency to $1 trillion in total market capitalization. This value has nearly doubled since the end of 2020. International investment bank Citi has also expressed interest, and in a report published yesterday Citi argued that Bitcoin is at the verge of either mainstream adoption or a “speculative implosion.”

The latest bitcoin bull run has seen unprecedented institutional participation. Since January, Bitcoin support has been proposed by United States’ oldest bank BNY Mellon and payment processing giant Visa. Furthermore, major investors including Tesla's purchase of $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and MicroStrategy hoarding over 90,000 BTC make it hard for naysayers to dismiss its value as a real financial asset.

Among the institutions that joined the party, we find BlackRock, the world's top asset manager with $8.6 trillion in assets under management. The company filed with the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in late January to warn that it may add bitcoin futures to its investment funds. In mid-February, the firm's chief investment officer Rick Rieder admitted that the firm started to "dabble" in bitcoin.

With bitcoin seeing such widespread institutional recognition and adoption the race is on to launch regulated products supporting it. In the meantime, Goldman Sachs is also exploring the potential for a bitcoin exchange traded fund as well as digital asset custody.

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