Investing.com - Bitcoin and other major digital coins’ prices were higher on Wednesday, while Goldman Sachs said it is not any closer to offering crypto trading services as regulatory hurdles prevent holding of crypto assets.
Bitcoin rose 8.1% to $4,130.5 by 12:02 AM ET (05:02 GMT) on the Investing.com index, while Ethereum gained 8.1% to $117.06.
XRP advanced 7.1% to $0.38349 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin traded 7.7% higher to $32.826 on the Bitifinex exchange.
Despite today’s gains, Bitcoin has lost around 30% of its value in the past ten trading days. Virtual coins began falling in mid-November during a hard fork in Bitcoin cash, as investors feared it could drive down demand for the coin. Other analysts cite a decline in crypto miners as the reason for the sudden selloff.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Goldman Sachs still is not any closer to offering crypto-related services despite clients’ interests.
“One of the things they ask me is ‘Can you hold our coins?’ and I say ‘No, we cannot,” Justin Schmidt, the bank’s head of digital asset markets, said during a conference in New York. “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.”
Bloomberg News reported last year that Goldman was considering starting a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies.
Schmidt added that the bank's clients are “quite curious” about the space and its price changes and how to keep assets safe. However, Schmidt said “there are things that are more limited in terms of what we can offer” from a regulatory perspective,
“What I really want to see is the continued research and development of actual products and services,” Schmidt said. “In many ways, the rampant speculation that has been quelled over the past several months is really healthy for the ecosystem and I very much look forward to companies that are actually providing institutional-grade products and services.”