Goldman Sachs tried to rewrite FTX at the meeting in the Caribbean

David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, met with the billion-dollar FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in March to talk about closer relationships between Wall Street Bank and the barely three-year-old cryptocurrency exchange worth $ 32 billion.

The meeting that took place in the Caribbean is the latest sign of the growing influence of crypto companies in the traditional financial services sector.

Solomon and Bankman-Fried discussed with the matter during the meeting, according to two people familiar with the matter that Goldman FTX advises on his discussions with US regulators, in particular the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US derivative supervisory authority.

In March, FTX submitted a proposal to the CFTC that would enable her to sell prayer crypto derivatives to small investors and to handle their shops directly, which would be excluded in intermediate financial brokers such as Goldman.

Goldman also strives to advise the crypto startup on future financing rounds, and the two board chairman discussed whether the bank could take on a role in a possible IPO of FTX, two people said.

ftx, which was founded in 2019 by the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried in Hong Kong, was rated $ 32 billion in January, more than the market capitalization of Credit Suisse or Deutsche Bank.

Goldman led a banking consortium that advised the Coinbase crypto exchange in its listing at Nasdaq in April last year, which it originally rated $ 85 billion, although its share price has fallen since then.

one of the persons close to the Goldman meeting said that Bankman-Fried Prüffe, primarily, in the short term, primarily private funds and has not yet made a final decision about whether FTX should be brought to the stock exchange.

A third topic of discussion during the meeting was whether Goldman had a “future cooperation potential” with FTX at “Market Making” in crypto trade, since the Wall Street bank strengthens its presence on the markets for digital assets, according to one of the nearby people.

Solomon and Bankman-Fried also spoke that Goldman offers traditional banking services for the stock exchange. Large lender hesitated to open accounts for crypto exchanges because they had concerns about the developing regulatory status of the market and the risk of financial crime such as money laundering.

ftx, which moved his headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas last year, and Goldman Sachs refused to comment on the meeting.

With his application at CFTC,

ftx has unsettled some traditional financial groups. FTX wants to automate risk management and eliminate the need for brokers on the financial markets after it took over a regulated US appointment exchange LedGerx last year.

Goldman was one of the first banks to set up a cryptocurrency trading desk for trading with Bitcoin futures in 2018 before closed the unit just a few months later when the price of the cryptocurrency broke. The bank revived its role in the booming market for digital assets in March last year.

Some Wall Street dealers have pushed bank managers to further penetrate into the markets for digital assets, but the uncertainty across the regulatory limits in the USA and elsewhere has led to caution.

banks cannot trade cash cryptocurrency products, but some of them, including Goldman, have been active in the trade with futures and some other derivative markets since last year.

ftx has developed into one of the world's largest crypto trading exchanges since its introduction in May 2019. The most recent round of financing attracted Blue-Chip investors, including Japan's Softbank and Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

Last year Bankman-Fried said the Financial Times if FTX became the world's largest crypto exchange and the rival coinbase and Binance were overtaken, then buying a financial institution like Goldman would be "out of the question".

Additional reporting by Joshua Franklin