Goldman Sachs Dumped XRP & Solana, Slashed Ethereum 70% – Are Altcoins Just A Wall St. Fling?

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Oh look, another day, another Wall Street giant treating crypto like a Tinder date they matched with on a whim, then ghosted after one bad market dip. Goldman Sachs’ latest 13F filing (read: the most boring post-breakup social media stalking material ever) dropped the tea that they bailed on XRP and Solana ETFs entirely, and slashed their Ethereum holdings by 70% to leave a measly $114 million left. Cute.

For context, that XRP position they just nuked was worth $154 million at the end of last year, spread across all the fancy ETF providers you’ve heard of if you’ve ever stared at crypto Twitter for more than 10 minutes. The Solana stake? Gone too, poof, vanished like that last slice of cake you swore you didn’t eat. Meanwhile their Bitcoin bet is still sitting pretty at $700 million, even after a 10% dip last quarter, because of course Bitcoin is the stable, boring partner they’ll never cheat on. They’re even launching a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF for customers, because nothing says “I’m committed” like packaging your favorite asset into a fancy new product to sell to people who still think crypto is just for buying drugs on the dark web (it’s not, mostly).

For anyone who screamed “INSTITUTIONAL ADOPTION!!!” from the rooftops last quarter when Goldman first dipped their toes into XRP and Solana ETFs? Turns out those were just little flirty test positions, not some grand long-term romance. Bloomberg already reckoned that XRP bet was probably just their trading desk messing around, not a real “we believe in this” move, and now the full exit makes that pretty hard to argue with. Oops.

What are they doing instead of messing with random altcoins, you ask? They’re upping stakes in the boring, actually makes money crypto adjacent companies: Circle (the USDC people, who basically print money, no notes), Galaxy Digital, Coinbase, Robinhood, PayPal. Smart move, honestly. Way less likely to drop 40% in a week because some guy on TikTok posted a meme about it. They did trim their Bitcoin mining stock holdings a little though, probably because watching those stocks bounce around like a caffeinated squirrel is exhausting even for Wall Street.

Crypto markets reacted to the news like a drama queen who just found out their ex is dating someone better: XRP and Solana dipped a little, Bitcoin barely blinked, everyone else just kept on doing their thing. For the ETF issuers who just lost Goldman as a holder? Oof, tough break. XRP ETFs had pulled in over $1.5 billion in assets by early 2026, and Goldman made up around 73% of the big institutional money in those things at one point. Their exit might make other stuffy old banks go “hmm, maybe we don’t want to touch that either” which is a whole mood.

This whole thing just proves what we all already knew: Bitcoin is the “digital gold” that Wall Street will cling to like a life raft in a storm, random altcoins are just the fun fling they hook up with when the market’s hot and dump as soon as things get shaky. Whether this is just a little summer fling break for Goldman or they’re never touching altcoins again? We’ll find out when the next 13F drops, I guess. Until then, don’t take your financial advice from a bank that bails on a coin faster than you bail on plans to go to the gym.

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2026-05-18 16:06