Goldman Sachs is aiming to spin-out its tokenization platform, GS DAP, from its digital assets business in the middle of next year.

Mathew McDermott, head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, described tokenization as the “topic du jour” at the Digital Asset Summit in London on 15 October 2025.

“There is a big focus on different tokenization initiatives we have developed,’ he added. “We have our own digital asset platform, which we are very focused on divesting in the middle of next year.”

GS DAP uses technology developed by infrastructure provider Digital Asset, who also developed the Canton Network, a blockchain infrastructure with built-in privacy controls required by institutions. McDermott said the new, standalone company will aim to create a distributed ecosystem that allows participants to interoperate seamlessly, efficiently, and at scale.

In November last year Tradeweb, the operator of electronic marketplaces for rates, credit, equities and money markets, became the first strategic partner in GS DAP and will include their trading and liquidity capabilities across fixed income to the platform.

Chris Bruner, chief product officer at Tradeweb, said in a statement: “Our goal is to create and utilize a solution that ushers in a new wave of access, liquidity, and interoperability for the digital financial markets, introducing new capabilities to the marketplace that advance market structure and connectivity.”

GS DAP was conceived in 2021 and launched in 2022 to provide a blockchain platform with the flexibility to settle on different underlying networks.

McDermott said: “One of the reasons we want to divest the platform is that having platforms on balance sheet makes it very hard to scale and get broad institutional adoption.”

He argued that a more market neutral platform provides the ability to scale, accelerate adoption and be interoperable with other networks.

“One of the things that excites us about the platform is that we go from primary issuance right through to post-trade, so we have the full lifecycle of an asset,” McDermott added. “Once you start to marry that to other platforms, it becomes very powerful.”

GS DAP is one of the four core areas of the digital asset business, according to Mcdermott. Another is cash-settled global crypto trading where the bank tries to be as active as it can in every product that it is able to trade, and also provides data and content.

“With the movement in the U.S. in the legal and regulatory space, that is hopefully going to broaden,” added McDermott “We see the market become more institutionalized so there is more demand for different products.”

Collateral mobility

Another important area of focus is the use of distributed ledger technology to increase collateral mobility, especially as there are more use cases for stablecoins and tokenized money market funds. McDermott said: “Collateral mobility is going to become key in 24/7 markets.”

In July this year BNY said in a statement it will employ blockchain technology developed by Goldman Sachs to maintain a record of customers’ ownership of select money market funds. The statement said this combined solution marked the first time in the U.S. that fund managers have enabled subscription for shares of their money market funds via BNY’s LiquidityDirect and Digital Asset platforms.

BlackRock, BNY Investments Dreyfus, Federated Hermes, Fidelity Investments, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management will participate in the initial launch. Mirror tokens of the money market fund shares are created using GS DAP. McDermott said in a statement at the time that using tokens to represent the value of shares of money market funds on GS DAP would unlock their utility as a form of collateral and open up more seamless transferability in the future.

Consolidation

Goldman Sachs has also made a number of strategic investments in digital asset companies. For example,  the bank was one of the investors in Digital Asset’s $135m fundraising in June this year.

“Our portfolio is a microcosm of the market because we have seen a lot of M&A activity, even amongst our own companies,” McDermott added. “Naturally, some folks have aspirations to go public.”

He highlighted that as the digital asset space matures, there will only be space for so many companies. For example, Goldman Sachs was an investor in Coin Metrics, a provider of crypto data, indexes and network risk solutions, which was acquired in July this year by Talos, which provides institutional trading and portfolio technology for digital assets. He also expects consolidation amongst the increasing number of digital asset treasuries.

“A really good example is custodians because there are a number of them in digital assets,” he added. “We have two in our portfolio who are fantastic companies.”

In addition, traditional custodians such as Citi and BNY are also entering digital assets with large balance sheets and more risk appetite and tolerance. McDermott argued consolidation would make sense to streamline the costs and have a stronger business.

Digital money

The final area of focus is all forms of digital money. Goldman Sachs is an investor in Fnailty the operator of blockchain-based wholesale payment systems regulated by central banks. Fnality raised $136 in a Series C funding round in September this year.

Michelle Neal, chief executive of Fnality International, said in a statement: “With 24/7 payment rails, real-time settlement, and enhanced liquidity management, we’re not just modernizing wholesale payments, we’re building a future that fuses decentralized finance’s operational optimization with traditional finance’s capital efficiency.”

Fnality launched the Sterling Fnality Payment System in the UK in December 2023. McDermott believes central bank digital currencies will co-exist with stablecoins, digital currencies on blockchains which are designed to maintain a stable value, typically pegged one-to-one with conventional fiat currencies, most commonly the US dollar.