Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez said a report that stated the bank was closing or delaying its cryptocurrency trading desk was “fake news.” This information appeared on Bank Innovation and across business media yesterday.

Chavez told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday (video here) that desk or no desk, Goldman will continue its exploration of cryptocurrency — and offer a bitcoin derivative.

“The next stage of the exploration is what we call non-deliverable forwards, these are over the counter derivatives, they’re settled in U.S. dollars and the reference price is the bitcoin-U.S. dollar price established by a set of exchanges,” Chavez said. He also spoke, intriguingly and vaguely, of “physical bitcoins” — hence the stock photo illustration above, which otherwise has no place in polite society.

Regarding the news of the trading desk being delayed, first reported by Business Insider, Chavez said, “I never thought I would hear myself use this term but I really have to describe that news as fake news.” A Goldman spokeswoman said in October the bank was exploring cryptocurrency “in response to client interest,” setting off a firestorm of speculation on Twitter and in the business media.

But it is not clear whether a trading desk will ever appear. Goldman did not correct the rumors about a trading desk being planned for June 2018, which was reported by Bloomberg and others in December.

The winner in all this is Goldman, which gets intense and sustained media coverage over mere rumors of an offering. Chavez said at Disrupt yesterday, “I think one of the wonderful things about being at Goldman Sachs is we do get written about, a lot.”

The loser is bitcoin and the long tail of altcoins, whose slide (and extreme price sensitivity to news such as this, real or fake) continues.

Goldman’s abandoning plans to launch a crypto desk, market crashed 15%.
Goldman’s says article that it was abandoning plans is fake news , market drops 5%.

— Ran NeuNer (@cryptomanran) September 7, 2018