The mysterious corporation that took out Wall Street’s first Bitcoin-backed loan from Goldman Sachs has been exposed as Coinbase, America’s largest crypto exchange.

In specific, as of 2021, Goldman Sachs manages $2.5 trillion in assets.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Coinbase has taken up a Bitcoin-backed loan from Goldman as a strategy to strengthen relations between the crypto and trading worlds, with Coinbase Institutional Head Brett Tejpaul saying:

“Coinbase’s work with Goldman is a first step in the recognition of crypto as collateral which deepens the bridge between the fiat and crypto economies.”

The loan’s cash value was not specified, but it was secured by a percentage of Coinbase’s overall holdings of 4,487 Bitcoin, which are currently worth roughly $170 million. The loan has a 24-hour risk monitoring system, but it also compels Coinbase to fill up its BTC collateral if prices drop too low.

While Bitcoin and other crypto-backed loans are prevalent in the crypto business, notably on DeFi protocols, they are a rarity in traditional banking, where crypto is considered as excessively dangerous and unpredictable as collateral.

In a May 2 blog post, asset management firm Arca stated that potential borrowers are seeking more such possibilities.

The Bitcoin-backed loan attracted a lot of discussion on Twitter. “No wonder the SEC is hiring people,” Bitcoin podcaster Preston Pysh tweeted about the loan on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has outlined his vision for decentralized social media networks enabling free expression. On May 2, he told the Milken Institute that Twitter, under new owner Elon Musk, had the chance to “basically embrace adopting a decentralized protocol” that the network could run on.

A decentralized social media network, according to Armstrong, would allow content producers to choose their own moderation standards, and access to all material would be democratized rather than algorithmically determined. This would prevent some material streams on a platform from being suppressed, allowing consumers to see anything they want.

If Twitter does not seize the chance, Armstrong points out that teams are already working on decentralized social media networks, which he calls DeSo, where people may own their own identities.

Since 2019, Twitter’s creator Jack Dorsey has been working on Bluesky, a decentralized social media network that functions independently of Twitter.  The purpose of the network is to drive the adoption of technology where “creators have control over relationships with their audiences, and developers have the freedom to build.”