- Fidelity Investments is evaluating a plan to offer Bitcoin to retail investors by allowing them to trade Bitcoin on its platform.
- In October 2018, Fidelity launched Fidelity Digital Assets (FDA) aimed at serving the growing demand for cryptocurrencies from its institutional clients.
- Charles Schwab and Fidelity Digital Assets will launch a new crypto exchange called EDX Markets.
An important example of the relevance that Bitcoin has acquired over the last few years is that, Despite being in a bear market, investors continue to demand the cryptocurrency.
The Wall Street Journal public an article on September 12 where they reveal that Fidelity Investments is evaluating a plan to offer Bitcoin to retail investors, allowing them to trade the leading crypto on its platform.
Fidelity Investments and the crypto world
It is necessary to put the news in context. Fidelity Investments is an investment giant that manages more than US$34.4 million of retail accounts and approximately US$4.3 billion of total assets under management.
This is not the company’s first approach to the crypto ecosystem. In October 2018, Fidelity launched Fidelity Digital Assets (FDA) aimed at serving the growing demand for cryptocurrencies from its institutional clients.
In the FDA official website the following can be read:
“Our ongoing research drives our belief that bitcoin is more than just an asset; represents the basis of our business and a new financial system”.
Through the FDA, the company offers its institutional clients a variety of solutions, including cold storage custody, transaction execution and settlement services.
In the Press release where was revealed the birth of FDA, Abigail P. Johnson, President and CEO of Fidelity Investments, assured that the company’s goal was to make digital assets, like Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.
Johnson also said that they look forward to continuing to invest and experiment, over the long term, with ways to make this emerging asset class easier for our clients to understand and use.”
“The creation of Fidelity Digital Assets is the first step in a long-term vision to create a full-service, enterprise-grade platform for digital assets.”.
Four years later, you can see how committed Fidelity Investments is to the crypto ecosystem.
Fidelity appears to bet heavily on Bitcoin
According to the WSJ, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz told the SALT conference in New York that he had heard rumors about the company’s plans.
“A bird told me that Fidelity, a little bird in my ear, will switch its retail customers to crypto soon enoughNovogratz said. “I hope that bird is right. And so we are seeing this institutional march”.
However, Fidelity had not shared its plans with customers and therefore it was just a rumour.
The strength is in the joining
Just one day after the Fidelity rumors spread, I know ad that a group of giants, including Charles Schwab and Fidelity Digital Assets, will launch a new crypto exchange called EDX Markets.
According to the press release, EDX Markets will be the “first exchange of its kind” which will provide investors “safer, faster and more efficient cryptocurrency trading“.
Other giants behind the new crypto exchange include Citadel Securities, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Virtu Financial. In fact, EDX Markets will be run by Jamil Nazaraliformer senior executive of Citadel Securities.
“Crypto is a US$1 trillion global asset class with over 300 million participants and a cumulative demand of millions more“, states the statement. “Unlocking this demand requires a platform that can meet the needs of both retail traders and institutional investors with high standards of compliance and security.”
Therefore, EDX Markets seeks to be the “safe entry point” to cryptocurrencies for both institutional and retail investors.
However, it is not known if the rumors of Fidelity offering Bitcoin solutions to retail customers were related to this launch.
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