Bitcoin was once considered too volatile, too unregulated, and too fringe for the kinds of financial instruments that respectable Wall Street firms package up and sell to wealthy clients. No longer.
In July, Jefferies Financial Group Inc. issued the first US structured note tied to BlackRock Inc.’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Since then, at least three other banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., have followed suit. Together, they’ve sold more than $530 million in notes linked to iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), according to Structured Products Intelligence, part of WSD.
In effect, banks ...
