Goldman Sachs (GS) buying an exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer for about $2 billion doesn’t seem like it has much to do with crypto at first.
However, the Wall Street banking giant’s purchase of Innovator Capital has implications that can shake up the entire crypto industry, primarily the ETF sector. That market today is worth $190 billion, but the spot bitcoin ETF market alone is projected 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 in 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 directional shifts within the asset management industry.”
The statements speak volumes about 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, according to one of its executives, bitcoin ETFs have become the firm’s most profitable product line.
As a reminder, Goldman Sachs already serves as an Authorized Participant for major spot bitcoin ETFs, including those from BlackRock and Grayscale, facilitating their daily trading. And while Innovator primarily focuses on defined outcome ETFs, it has responded to the increasing demand for crypto exposure with structured ETFs such as the Innovator Uncapped Bitcoin 20 Floor ETF (QBF), which provides investors with exposure to bitcoin through a risk-managed strategy.
“Not only does this give them an ETF manufacturing scale in one shot, but it also opens up a pre-engineered, compliant channel for pushing buffered bitcoin exposure through private banks, RIAs and wealth platforms that crypto-native issuers struggle to access,” Anna Tutova, AI Crypto Minds founder and family offices’ advisor told CoinDesk.
Simply put, crypto is becoming another Wall Street product that traditional financial institutions want to get exposure to as investors demand new, innovative products and asset classes. ETFs are becoming the distribution channel for that demand.
‘Changing Bitcoin inherently’
This raises a long-standing debate about why cryptocurrency was created: to provide an alternative financial system that addresses the problems of legacy financial systems.
However, crypto needs mass adoption if it is to stand toe-to-toe with traditional finance and government oversight. And to do that, it needs the very institutions, such as BlackRock, Goldman and even the governments it meant to rival.
“This deal 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 strategic Web3 adviser.
And this is where many industry participants sound the alarm.
“Crypto is becoming just another Wall Street investment tool, not the alternative system it set out to be,” said AI Crypto Minds’ Tutova.
Trevor Koverko, a co-founder of Sapien and Polymath, echoed the sentiment, saying that Goldman Sachs’ potential crypto ETF move is “good for adoption, dangerous for the ethos.” Wall Street ETFs bring scale plus liquidity, but if we stop at ‘number go up in brokerage accounts,’ we’ve just rebuilt the old system on new assets. ETFs should be the on-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 might fail to uphold 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 corporations like BlackRock and Fidelity have become dominant crypto players, changing Bitcoin inherently. It is no longer a political tool based on self-custody, but, rather, a financial tool for wealth preservation and diversification.”
