Fidelity Launches Institutional Platform For Bitcoin And Ethereum

Fidelity Investments is spinning off a stand-alone company dedicated to bringing cryptocurrencies to institutional investors.

Called Fidelity Digital Assets, the limited liability corporation based in Boston will provide enterprise-grade custody solutions, a cryptocurrency trading execution platform and institutional advising services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, designed to align with blockchain's always-on trading cycle.

Fidelity Investments provides financial services for $7.2 trillion in customer assets and provides clearing, custody and investment services for 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers. But the fifth-largest asset manager in the world has largely limited its cryptocurrency exposure to a few peripheral services and through donations via their non-profit Fidelity Charitable.

With Fidelity Digital Asset's first customers being onboarded now, and general availability scheduled for early 2019, the launch of the subsidiary with 100 employees marks the latest and perhaps the largest push into cryptocurrency by an institutional asset manager.

“This is a recognition that there is institutional demand for these assets as a class,” says Tom Jessop, founding head of Fidelity Digital Assets. “Family offices, hedge funds, other sophisticated investors, are starting to think seriously about this space.”

Announced at an event in Bloomberg’s New York City headquarters, Fidelity Digital Assets will offer three main services. The most elaborate of these appears to be custody services for bitcoin, ether and other digital assets. In particular, the service is being designed give institutional investors a compliant way to secure their assets by holding them in a physical vault.

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