Having been in the works since its blockchain incubator was formed in 2014, Fidelity Investments, one of the biggest providers of 401(k) services and retirement products to Americans has today unveiled Fidelity Digital Assets, a separate business entity focused on institutional solutions for digital assets.
The news was leaked back June, as the company’s plans to build a digital asset exchange was spotted through a job ad looking for a DevOps system engineer.
Fidelity Digital Assets aims to be a full-service, enterprise-grade platform for securing, trading, and servicing investments in digital assets. The company will offer custody for digital assets offline, in vaulted deep cold-storage.
Second, Fidelity Digital Assets will offer execution services, a multi-venue capable solution powered by Fidelity’s proven order routing and matching technology. The company looks as if it will initially focus on bitcoin and ether.
Abigail P. Johnson, Chairman, and CEO of Fidelity Investments stated:
“Our goal is to make digitally-native assets, such as bitcoin, more accessible to investors. We expect to continue investing and experimenting, over the long-term, with ways to make this emerging asset class easier for our clients to understand and use.”[/perfectpullquote]
Akbar Thobhani, CEO of SFOX, a crypto prime dealer that just raised $22M to build an institutional crypto asset management platform said:
“Nasdaq and Fidelity’s recent announcements prove that cryptocurrency will not be going anywhere anytime soon. There’s already significant interest in security tokens and the compliance, cost-efficiency, and liquidity they provide to securities markets, but they will need to be registered, traded, and structured correctly. As the second-largest global exchange by market cap, Nasdaq has the proper experience, tools, and network to deliver security tokens to be adopted by the traditional masses. Similarly, Fidelity Digital Asset Services’ focus on cryptocurrency custody and trading services for enterprise clients showcases the commitment and interest they’re seeing from their clients, but we’ll really hit a turning point when Fidelity offers cryptocurrency to their retail and 401K customers.”