Despite apparent interest from its customers, investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has no immediate plans to offer a cryptoasset wallet custodial service to its customers. This news came from head of digital assets at Goldman Justin Schmidt, who was a panelist at the recent Consensus:Invest conference in New York.

Schmidt explained Goldman’s reluctance in developing a virtual asset custody capability, intimating that there are regulatory impediments getting in the way, saying in this context “there are things that are more limited in terms of what we can offer,” according to Bloomberg.

One of the things we have to take into consideration when we’re building out our business is what we can and cannot do from a regulatory perspective.

Justin Schmidt

Rather than building its own in-house solution, Goldman recently made headway into cryptoasset custody by investing in BitGo’s Series B funding, along with Mike Novogratz, which raised a total of $58.5 million.

Custody a Big Deal

BitGo offers an institutional grade custody service to take possession and guarantee the safety of cryptoassets. Fidelity, a multinational financial services company, also recently launched their own custody platform.

Mike Novogratz – whose trading desk is reported to have lost $136 million dollars during 2018 amid a collapse in cryptoasset prices – has previously elaborated on the importance of a custody solution, saying during an October Bloomberg interview that availability of custody solutions from reputable institutional names like ICE and Fidelity are “one of the things that will get institutional investors involved in crypto.” He said Fidelity had been working on their custody platform for four years.

ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced a week ago the delay of their upcoming bitcoin futures product Bakkt, which also doubles as a custody service. Bakkt was set to launch in December, but now is set to go live in late January of next year. Bakkt’s CEO, Kelly Loeffler, also cited the difficulty of getting through the required regulation, in order to launch their product.