Financial Giant Fidelity Investments to Launch Its Crypto Trading Service Within Weeks
As traditional financial institutions continue to enter the crypto industry, financial giant Fidelity Investments plans to launch its crypto trading service within the next few weeks. The crypto trading facility will be a part of the services offered by the company’s crypto subsidiary, Fidelity Digital Assets.
Announced last year in October 2018, the Fidelity Digital Assets would provide crypto custody solutions besides crypto trading services. Speaking to Bloomberg on this matter, a Fidelity spokesperson Arlene Roberts said that the crypto trading service would be available only to institutional investors.
Roberts added: “We currently have a select set of clients we’re supporting on our platform. We will continue to roll out our services over the coming weeks and months based on our clients’ needs, jurisdictions, and other factors. Currently, our service offering is focused on Bitcoin.”
As Fidelity’s crypto trading service is targeted for institutional investors, the company has also promised to offer an OTC platform for Bitcoin trading. Earlier in March 2019, Fidelity’s services for institutional-grade storage went live.
Fidelity plans to make quick inroads in the crypto services sector before the institutional money starts pouring in huge amounts. Last week, Fidelity released a report stating that institutional investments in digital assets will be on a rise in the next five years.
The survey also notes that nearly 22% of institutional players are already having some exposure to digital assets and a majority of the investments done within the last three years. Moreover, 40% respondents said that they are open to digital asset investments in the next five years.
The survey was conducted across a wide array of investors like hedge funds, family offices, financial advisors, etc. Some of the important findings of the survey are:
- A 47% of the respondents say that digital assets are an innovative technology play.
- Nearly 46% find digital assets’ low correlation to other assets among the most appealing characteristic
- Financial advisors (74%) and family offices (80%) view the characteristics of digital assets most favorably
The growing sentiment of institutional players for the crypto industry reflects some positive development. Institutions are having a close watch to all the developments with regards to the regulatory front in the crypto sector. Also, they’re looking at different ways of using the crypto and blockchain to the best of their interests.
Besides Fidelity, other big institutions like Nasdaq, ICE’s Bakkt, and Morgan Digital Digital are putting considerable efforts to attract institutional players to the crypto market.