Goldman Sachs prepares to spin out digital assets platform

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) is talking with potential partners about plans to spin off its wholly owned digital assets platform, known as GS DAP, into a new company that would be owned by market participants, the company said on Monday

The Wall Street bank is building out the platform’s capabilities for financial firms to create, trade, and settle financial instruments through blockchain technology.

It’s in talks with a number of market participants, while the new digital-asset platform is in early stages. Its long-term goal targets a spin-out in the next 12 to 18 months, subject to regulatory approval, Mathew McDermott, global head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg.

“Delivering a distributed technology solution to a wide cross-section of financial market participants has the potential to redefine market connectivity, infrastructure composability, and to deliver a new suite of commercial opportunities for the buy- and sell-side,” he said in statement.

“Establishing a new, standalone company independent of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and its Digital Assets business will help to provide the future runway for digital financial services by ensuring a fit-for-purpose, long-term solution,” he added.

Tradeweb Markets (TW), an electronic trading platform, will collaborate with Goldman (NYSE:GS) as its first strategic partner to include its trading and liquidity capabilities across the fixed income spectrum in an effort to bring new commercial use cases to the platform, Goldman said.

Goldman Sachs (GS) stock slipped 0.2% and Tradeweb (TW) stock rose 0.8% in late morning trading.