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Comment by dsacco | Hacker News Reader

This is an edgy soundbite, but I don’t think it contributes anything substantive to the discussion of a cryptocurrency exchange being acquired by a GS subsidiary. I could have replaced “Goldman Sachs” with “Google” and I’d have received the same amount of insight.

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Circle seems to be far from a Goldman subsidiary. According to Crunchbase Goldman invested once in their Series C. If anything the Bloomberg headline seems to overplay the Goldman connection.

Goldman Sachs is so much bigger than Google. Google is substantial, but it's nothing compared to Goldman Sachs.

Goldman is a company that's funded entire wars, on both sides of conflicts. If you dig behind almost all revolutions, governments, and companies, on the planet chances are Goldman Sachs is behind there lurking.

Google can only dream of having 1/1000th's the influence of Goldman.

> Goldman Sachs is so much bigger than Google.

Goldman is more politically connected (and more widely invested, at least per dollar of assets, because it's an investment bank, and not tech firm that invested in other firms incidentally), sure, but Google is much bigger by many measures (nearly 8 times the market cap, for instance.)

Market cap is not everything and saying 'politically connected' is a massive understatement - they are politics. Goldman is the more powerful institution - Google wishes they could have entire administrative cabinets flooded with ex-execs.

Market cap is especially misleading in case of investment banks: it's not about how much money they own, it's all about how much of their clients' assets they manage, and that's about $1.5 trillion. Google can only dream of having this much cash at their disposal.

> it's all about how much of their clients' assets they manage, and that's about $1.5 trillion. Google can only dream of having this much cash at their disposal.

So, given that number, Goldman manages (and is accountable to clients, as well as their own shareholders, for the management of) a little under 2 Googles worth of market value.

Google manages 1 Google worth of market value, accountable only to Google shareholders.

Google does not "manage" it's market value, because most of it is frozen, not readily available for Google's CEO to spend. It is also mostly virtual, while GS assets are hard cash.

The point is: with $1.5 trillion in assets, Goldman Sachs can, just by slight adjustment in its investment policies, make whole countries prosper economically, or ruin them. Google does not have that much influence.

Of course it does, it simply chooses not to. If Google re-prioritizes search results for entities it believes are in a specific country, that country is going to have a recession much faster than if GSCO attempts to influence it via policy

> Goldman is the more powerful institution

You're significantly overstating the influence of one institution which, while veritable in financial and New York City Democratic circles, is also one amongst many heavy banks which now have to share the mantle with the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, et al, not to mention the reach and influence of tech.

That sentence says more powerful, not most powerful.

I do believe Goldman Sachs is the more powerful institution of the two we've been discussing - listing off other influential financial institutions doesn't really support the counter-argument. Google is also one amongst heavy tech companies such as Apple (arguably the most influential tech company since it has the most capital, not because it has the highest market cap), facebook, etc.

Goldman has influence worldwide. Google can hardly go 6 months without a billion dollar fine from the EU. Google lags behind Baidu and Soso in China - these institutions are just not in the same ballpark.

Market cap is kinda a misnomer - a snapshot in time that doesn't mean much. How about use something like total volume of capital that's flowed through the company/or facilitated by the company? For Goldman Sachs that would be trillions or on the order of the GNP of the largest countries.

> How about use something like total volume of capital that's flowed through the company/or facilitated by the company?

Sure, if you measure by exactly what an investment bank specializes in, its unsurprising that Goldman does somewhat more of it than Google, but still...

> For Goldman Sachs that would be trillions or on the order of the GNP of the largest countries.

For Google, if it hasn't already crossed into the trillions it will soon; at over $100 billion in annual revenue with over 20% annual revenue growth, it doesn't take that long to pump a trillion dollars through even without counting money flowing through in forms of transaction facilitation that aren't revenue, such as Google's various payment systems.

And JP Morgan Chase moves $6 Trillion per day.

Why don't we measure by the number of google searches each company handles?

Total volume of capital flowed through the company would include foreign exchange trading, which don't really create value directly but moves around $5 trillion per day.

For an IB, the measure is "assets under management"

> How about use something like total volume of capital that's flowed through the company/or facilitated by the company?

You can measure Google influence by daily users/processed ads views/youtube videos, and number of people affected by product decisions inside Google.

Google banning crypto ads may have greater impact than GS investments into niche companies.

Goldman considers themselves a tech company before a banking company. They really have some amazing tech, although it's proprietary and used to give them an edge at trading, which is why we don't usually see it.

'Goldman is a company that's funded entire wars, on both sides of conflicts. ' That sounds like an interesting read, is there an article a relevant article I can check out?

Sounds like a decent hedge.

Let's pose a theoretical question.

If both of them were to disappear off the face of the Earth tomorrow, which would would people notice more? Which one would people miss more?

If you wiped both, Google would be more noticed. But Goldman Sachs would have a WAY WAY bigger effect indirectly.

Google MarketCap is based on a promise that tech is taking over the world, but the day to day business of Google is pretty much insignificant.

Goldman literally decides the direction of the world through their investments, policy and lobbies.

The fact that they are pretty much invisible is actually a feature.

Would the effect be positive for the rest of humanity?

Why not both Goldman and Google? I can't see how knocking off the leader of corrupt capitalism and the infrastructure of the surveillance state wouldn't be a good thing.

If you replaced GS with Google, it would still be funny, but it would no longer be true.

The statement is sufficiently underspecified that it’s not falsifiable for any large company, which is my point.

If you dislike Goldman Sachs, you’re inclined to believe it. If you don’t dislike Goldman Sachs, you’re inclined to be more skeptical about it. The description is fully open to interpretation, which means believing it is a function of ideology and identity more than facts and reality.

Descriptions are only meaningful insofar as they help differentiate things. There is no precision in calling a giant financial company a vampiric squid. So what do we actually learn? It’s a total sideshow to a meaningful discussion about cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency exchanges, the evolving role of traditional financial institutions in cryptocurrency trading, or the future legitimacy of digital currencies as an asset class.

I'd have replaced "Goldman Sachs" with "Berkshire Hathaway", or "General Electric" or "A Private Equity Firm."

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