Goldman Sachs Sends a Confidence Vote to ETH: The Biggest Detail in the $2.3 Billion Holdings Isn't BTC

Author: Nancy, PANews

Today, it’s no longer surprising for Wall Street giants to enter the crypto space. In sectors like ETFs, RWA, and derivatives, the presence of mainstream institutions is becoming increasingly clear. The market’s real concern has shifted from whether to enter to how to deploy.

Recently, Goldman Sachs disclosed a crypto allocation of up to $2.3 billion. Although this still represents a “small position” within its overall asset portfolio and has been significantly reduced compared to previous levels, its allocation structure is quite meaningful. Despite the vast market cap gap, Goldman maintains nearly equal exposure to BTC and ETH.

This detail may be more signaling than the size of the holdings themselves.

Equal Footing for BTC and ETH: Goldman Sachs Shows Confidence in ETH

Amid ongoing pressure on Ethereum’s price and a clear cooling of market sentiment, Goldman Sachs’s latest disclosed holdings reveal a different signal from the prevailing mood.

According to the 13F filing, by Q4 2025, Goldman Sachs will indirectly hold about $2.361 billion in crypto assets through ETFs.

In the context of its overall portfolio, this allocation is not prominent. At the same time, Goldman’s total investment portfolio amounts to $811.1 billion, with crypto exposure accounting for only about 0.3%. For traditional financial giants managing trillions or even tens of trillions of dollars, this is a cautious test. Mainstream players still see crypto as an alternative asset rather than a core holding. Small allocations satisfy client needs, maintain market participation, and allow for strict risk control amid volatility.

What truly matters is not the size but the allocation structure and direction.

In Q4 last year, the overall crypto market experienced a correction, and significant net outflows occurred from spot ETF products. Goldman Sachs accordingly shrank its positions, with Bitcoin spot ETF and Ethereum spot ETF holdings decreasing by 39.4% and 27.2%, respectively, quarter-over-quarter. Meanwhile, it initiated small positions in XRP ETF and Solana ETF, testing the second-tier assets.

By the end of the quarter, Goldman held approximately 21.2 million shares of Bitcoin spot ETF, worth about $1.06 billion; about 40.7 million shares of Ethereum spot ETF, worth roughly $1 billion; and allocated about $152 million to XRP ETF and $109 million to Solana ETF.

In other words, nearly 90% of its crypto exposure remains concentrated in BTC and ETH. Compared to some aggressive asset managers or crypto-native funds, Goldman’s strategy is clearly more conservative, prioritizing liquidity, compliance, and institutional acceptance.

But what’s more signaling is the nearly equal weighting of BTC and ETH.

Currently, Bitcoin’s market cap is about 5.7 times that of Ethereum, yet Goldman does not weight its holdings by market cap. Instead, ETH and BTC are nearly “on equal footing.” This indicates that within its asset framework, Ethereum has been elevated to a second-tier strategic crypto asset. Moreover, when reducing positions in Q4 2025, ETH’s reduction was 12% less than BTC’s. To some extent, this is a confidence vote in ETH’s potential.

This preference is not a recent development.

Over the past few years, Goldman Sachs has been continuously involved in asset tokenization, derivatives infrastructure, OTC trading, and other areas—many of which are highly related to the Ethereum ecosystem.

In fact, as early as several years ago, Goldman Sachs’s research department publicly predicted that ETH could surpass BTC in market cap in the coming years, citing its network effects and ecosystem advantages as a native smart contract platform.

This judgment persists today. In last year’s “Global Macro Research” report, Goldman Sachs again emphasized that, based on real-world utility, user base, and technological iteration speed, Ethereum has the potential to become the core carrier of mainstream crypto assets.

Despite recent divergence between Ethereum’s price and fundamentals, Goldman Sachs remains relatively optimistic. It notes that on-chain activity paints a different picture: daily new addresses reached 427,000 in January, a record high, far exceeding the 162,000 daily addresses during DeFi’s summer in 2020. Daily active addresses also hit 1.2 million, another all-time high.

Perhaps in Wall Street’s asset logic, Bitcoin has become a macro hedge, while Ethereum carries the structural narrative of on-chain finance and applications. The former leans toward value storage, the latter bets on infrastructure and network effects.

Goldman’s Shift, Wall Street’s Hesitation and Entry

Goldman Sachs is also a “latecomer” in crypto.

If we extend the timeline, this traditional financial institution’s approach has been cautious—prioritizing compliance and gradual testing.

As early as 2015, Goldman Sachs filed a patent application for a securities settlement system based on SETLcoin, exploring blockchain-like technology to optimize clearing processes. At that time, Bitcoin had not yet entered mainstream consciousness; this was more a technical interest than an asset endorsement.

In 2017, as Bitcoin’s price soared to record highs, Goldman Sachs planned to establish a crypto trading desk to offer Bitcoin-related services; in 2018, it hired former crypto traders to prepare a Bitcoin trading platform. By then, Goldman Sachs had begun to engage directly with this emerging market.

But the real turning point came in 2020. That year, during a client conference call, Goldman Sachs explicitly stated that Bitcoin could not even be considered an asset class, as it produces no cash flow and cannot effectively hedge inflation. This public skepticism sparked considerable controversy.

Goldman Sachs began including Bitcoin in its weekly asset class reports in 2021

A year later, its stance softened rapidly. In 2021, amid rising institutional demand, Goldman Sachs relaunched its crypto trading division, began trading Bitcoin derivatives, and partnered with Galaxy Digital to launch Bitcoin futures products. In 2022, it completed its first OTC crypto trade and expanded its digital assets team. By 2024, Goldman Sachs was investing in multiple crypto companies and officially entered the spot ETF market.

Full acceptance truly arrived in the past two years.

In March 2025, Goldman Sachs mentioned cryptocurrencies for the first time in its annual shareholder letter, acknowledging increased industry competition and predicting that clearer regulation would drive a new wave of institutional adoption. It highlighted tokenization, DeFi, and stablecoins as areas poised for growth under new regulations. Recently, its CEO David Solomon publicly confirmed that the firm is increasing research and investment in tokenization, stablecoins, and prediction markets.

This shift is not uncommon among traditional old money.

For example, in 2025, Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, admitted that although he first encountered Bitcoin in 2012, it took him eight years to make his first Bitcoin investment, mainly because he initially didn’t understand it and was skeptical. Only after studying blockchain and Bitcoin mechanisms did he realize it was a “great technological breakthrough.” He even said that with some homework, 90% of people would lean toward Bitcoin.

Today, Skybridge holds a large amount of Bitcoin and allocates about 40% of client funds to digital assets. Amid recent bear markets, Scaramucci revealed that the firm has been gradually building Bitcoin positions at $84,000, $63,000, and the current range, describing buying in a downtrend as “catching falling knives,” but remaining long-term bullish.

These Wall Street elite investors’ core decision-making always prioritizes risk. They tend to scale into positions only when risks are manageable.

Moreover, the investment cycle of institutions also means that real capital entry is a long-term race.

According to Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, in a recent interview, the next wave of buyers will still be financial advisors, large brokerages like Morgan Stanley, family offices, insurance companies, and sovereign states. Bitwise’s average client requires about eight meetings before allocating assets. Since they typically meet quarterly, “eight meetings” imply a decision cycle of around two years. Morgan Stanley only approved a Bitcoin ETF in Q4 2025, and their “eight-meeting clock” has just started. Actual capital inflows may not explode until 2027. This is similar to the launch of gold ETFs in 2004, where inflows increased gradually over eight years to reach the first peak. Most professional investors’ funds still do not hold Bitcoin.

The transition of crypto assets from fringe assets to mainstream assets is a slow and winding process. When former skeptics start holding crypto in a compliant manner, and doubters become long-term allocators, the real change in the market may not be in price action but in the upgrade of participant structures.