However, it will not be linked to tokens or cryptocurrencies, but to equities already listed on the stock exchange
Goldman Sachs has filed an application with the SEC to be able to launch an ETF on DeFi.
The fund will be called Goldman Sachs Innovate DeFi and Blockchain Equity ETF, aims to replicate the performance of the Solactive Decentralized Finance and Blockchain Index, and will invest at least 80% of its assets in securities, depositary receipts and shares of companies included in the index.
This index was created by Solactive AG, and is designed to allow you to take positions in stocks of companies that are involved in the implementation of blockchain and decentralized finance technologies.
As of today, however, there is no trace of this index among Solactive’s active indices, despite the fact that the company has already created 20 other blockchain-related indices, so it is not yet possible to know which stocks will be taken into consideration.
It is worth noting that listed companies are, of course, centralized, and may have little to do with decentralized finance.
However, companies such as Twitter or Square have already revealed that they have development plans that will attempt to exploit DeFi technologies, so it is not impossible to imagine that an index could be created that would use equities as a basis for taking a position on decentralized finance.
Furthermore, there are crypto exchanges that are already listed on the stock exchange, such as Coinbase, or that seem to be planning to do so, such as Binance.
In this way, Goldman Sachs’ ETF on DeFi and Blockchain will be very different from those on bitcoin that the SEC continues not to want to approve, because it could in fact be based only on equities already traded on exchanges in a fully regulated manner, thus free of the risks that have so far prevented the SEC from approving bitcoin ETFs.
These are really two different things, i.e. on the one hand a fund that replicates the price trend of bitcoin on the exchange, and on the other hand, one that replicates the price trend of a basket of equities in some way connected with decentralized finance or distributed ledger technology.
The initiative of Goldman Sachs shows a clear interest on the part of more traditional finance in these new emerging worlds based on a completely different type of finance, as it is decentralized. However, it will remain to be seen whether the basket of assets of the Solactive Decentralized Finance and Blockchain Index will really be made up of companies that have something closely to do with decentralization, or not.
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