Fidelity Digital Assets

Welcome to our Fidelity Digital Assets news page. Here you'll find some of our featured Fidelity Digital Assets investments content pieces as well as all our latest Fidelity Digital Assets crypto venture posts.

Fidelity Digital Assets Executive: Ethereum Hard Fork May Delay Support for ETH Custody

The executive in charge of Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS), Tom Jessop, has recently affirmed that the company may take some time to offer Ethereum support. The reason? The Constantinople update, the hard fork that upgraded the token. Because of the recent change in code, the execs at Fidelity thought it would be a better idea to wait a bit.

FDAS, which is the digital asset trading and custody brand of the famous Fidelity Investments, has been launched recently this year and the company is already planning the future, which involves Ethereum.

However, despite the will to add Ethereum to the cryptos which are being traded in the network, Jessop has affirmed that things are not so simple to implement, especially after ETH changed its code.

Jessop said that the company, which actually only supports Bitcoin, will have to look at the demand for the asset, but not only that, as there are several technical and technological aspects which are just as important. For instance how decentralized a token is, what are the peculiarities of the protocol, etc.

The leader of the company told CoinDesk that Fidelity sees a sort of a correlation between demand and market cap. The tokens with the biggest market cap are the ones who are more probable to have a big demand, Jessop defends, so they will go from the down top in the ranking but not all tokens will be listed, as they will be seen case by case.

“We will probably go in market cap order, that’s where the demand is but it doesn’t mean that we will list every coin,” he said. “There may be reasons why we [won’t list] a coin that have nothing to do with quite frankly client [demand].”

He cited Ethereum as a difficult case because there are even more upgrades down the road now and they are trying to be sure that ETH is what they want for the platform, which can be a very hard call to make.

Part of the reason why the company is so “afraid” of listing Ethereum is that they see it as their duty to protect the customers, and if something could lead to a 51% attack, for instance, they have to be prepared. According to them, the upcoming Istanbul update, which is set for October, has to be analyzed in-depth before the token is accepted and added to the list.

Fidelity Digital Assets And The Goals for 2019

The main idea of the company this year, according to Jessop, is to scale the business of the company and to cover 90% of the market in the United States before 2020. You can bet this is a very ambitious plan.

Despite the crypto bear market, the company is ready for expansion and to secure regulatory approvals and licenses in the country to offer its services. To follow this goal, the company will look to expand its scope, get more clients and offer trading services.

At the moment, Jessop says that the FDAS has licenses in “a reasonable number” of places, declining to say in how many states the company can work and how difficult it will be to acquire the other licenses. The states with a larger market share will be prioritized.

He affirmed that the company was “encouraged” by the results that they got so far and that 90% of the country is not an exaggerated objective for the company to follow. FDAS will continue to make its journey to become a trusted custodian in the market and to build a reputation in the crypto world.

Demand for Cryptos

As Fidelity is a huge company with a diverse portfolio, you can bet that they would not enter this game without being sure that there was an actual demand first.

According to Fidelity, the company has seen a lot of demand since October. Several industries and firms are interested in the crypto world. They range from family offices, hedge funds, and even individuals. Even some crypto exchanges hoped to offer clients to Fidelity’s custodial services, so there was definitely a big demand in the market.

So far, the company has surveyed several kinds of funds and they saw that the interest in crypto investment was consistent in many of them.

Jessop explained that the company has seen consistent interest from several institutions and that this is mostly because people are doing their homework and understanding more about cryptos and the potential for money that exists with them.

Fidelity Launches Bitcoin Custody Services: Does This Signal The Institutions Here To Stay?

Fidelity Launches Bitcoin Custody Services, Are The Institutions Here To Stay?

Many people in the crypto world have defined 2019 as the year in which we’ll see the appearance of the institutional investors in the industry. Fidelity has finally launched its Bitcoin (BTC) custody services now, which means that there is a big chance that this affirmation is true.

With this comes the hope that the bear market will finally end soon and everybody will see the greens again. However, by welcoming the institutional investors, is the crypto market not abandoning its most crucial beliefs and principals? That is the question that was asked by NewsBTC.com recently.

Fidelity And Bitcoin

The CEO of Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson, has talked about the blockchain technology and the crypto world back in May 2017. According to her, the technology was interesting and it even had potential, but it had too many challenges like not being properly regulated, not being scalable and needing more governance.

However, almost two years after, it looks like the situation has changed a lot since Fidelity Investments has created Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS), which will be working with the blockchain technology and Bitcoin.

At the moment, Fidelity Digital Assets is testing their products and we’ll see them offering Bitcoin services for the richest people in the world now. Family offices, pensions, hedge funds, you name it, the crypto world will be a part of the institutional game now.

The “Bitcoin Paradox”

All of this would actually be pretty good news, generally speaking, and we can all agree that this may impact prices well, which is always a win-win situation for traders. However, NewsBTC.com actually has a great point: when we consider the “crypto ethics”, this is actually rather contra productive.

Why? Because Bitcoin was originally anti-system, anti-Wall Street and nothing in the whole world screams Wall Street better than Fidelity Investments.

This has, unfortunately, split the community apart. A lot of people are expecting to make a lot of money from Fidelity’s move since such a huge company always has a positive effect in making the prices of any asset going up. With Fidelity around, the bear market may be starting to dissipate.

However, the idealists believe the exact opposite: that Fidelity Investments is only looking to Bitcoin now because it is already a legitimate investment. Accepting institutional money would go against everything that Satoshi Nakamoto, the mythical creator of Bitcoin, stood for.

The paradox of Bitcoin is that in order for the token to create the revolution that it wants to make so hard, it needs adoption and adoption never actually happens without centralized authorities, or at least that is what NewsBTC.com defended on their article.

What about you? Are you happy with Fidelity Investments going onboard the Bitcoin train or do you would have preferred if Bitcoin was left alone to the people?

https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/todays-btc-eth-xrp-and-bch-price-analysis-latest-cryptocurrency-coin-chart-predictions/

Fidelity Investments' Crypto Venture Capital Fund Activates Again, Significant Innovation Coming

Fidelity Investments, one of the largest investment companies in the world in custody and execution of assets, has revived its crypto venture fund. As the company is responsible for holding and managing over $2.5 trillion USD in funds, this is huge news.

While the company was able to raise some eyebrows when it announced that it would launch Fidelity Digital Assets, a custody and execution platform aimed at digital assets, this new fund is almost as surprising as that.

Originally, the company was able to launch what was known as an “exploratory fund” for crypto and digital assets. The fund was originally created in 2017 and, while it served its purpose at the time, some key people at the company left and the fund died.

Now, The Block Crypto has talked to inside sources and they affirm that the once dead VC fund for cryptos is now back up again with a new fund manager. While the source is unknown, the original media outlet that reported on the story affirmed that this is happening.

The Old Crypto Fund

The original fund, as we’ve said, was started last year. At the time, it was managed by Nic Carter and Matt Walsh. They used the capital from Fidelity to invest in crypto assets that looked profitable at the time.

Why was the fund shut down? Because both Carter and Walsh left the company to start a new one called Castle Island Ventures. This company is a VC fund focused on Bitcoin.

While this meant that the fund was basically dead at the time as the two experts who spearheaded the idea left the company, it looks like now Fidelity is interested in the market again. The new fund will be overseen by Sachin Patodia, an executive that already worked in the company for 11 years. The new version of the fund will be allegedly bigger and considerably more ambitious than its older version.

Fidelity, Crypto and An Ambitious Plan

It’s clear that Fidelity is eyeing cryptos now. The efforts of the company to understand this market began way before the last bull run, in 2014. The firm has also examined how mining worked in 2015 and made an important partnership with Coinbase last year, in which it allowed for its clients to view their crypto holding on the crypto exchange.

Now, it is clear that the company has deemed cryptos interesting enough to invest more aggressively in them. While the plan is not yet clear, it is certainly ambitious, that much you can be sure of.

With the bear market now in place, the company will have its chance to buy the assets at a low price and less them high later when the inevitable bull run happens once more.

Fidelity Digital Assets & Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital to Open Crypto Custody and Brokerage for Institutions

Fidelity & Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital Partner on Institutional Crypto Custody and Brokerage Solution

One of the main Wall Street companies is now eyeing the crypto market. Fidelity, a $2.5 trillion asset manager, has decided to dive in the crypto world with a new product.

Fidelity is well-known for its retail-brokerage services and 401(k) offerings but now the company is starting to pay more attention to the crypto solutions. Most of the new services will be offered via Fidelity Digital Assets, a new entity in partnership with Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital, created to manage these new products.

https://twitter.com/novogratz/status/1051875013102632960

Tom Jessop was recently interviewed by The Block Crypto and he talked about the move from the company. According to him, the initial custody solutions will be focus on Bitcoin and Ether while the company is still planning new assets. The trading part of the new product will be provided by 'white glove' services to asset managers.

According to Jessop, Fidelity will act as the broker for the clients while it routes orders to the OTC desks of the firm to find the best prices for clients. The company has already working in the products for quite some time and claims to be ready to announce more products if there is enough demand for them.

During the interview, Jessop has affirmed that the company has been focused in taking its time in the last 6 to 9 months to build and elevate the services to a level in which they can go to the market and achieve some success. The new products will be more focused on institutional investors than retail ones.

Platform Will be Launched In 2019

Jessop has affirmed that this new platform will be launched in 2019 during an announced made in the Bloomberg LLP and Galaxy Digital conference. There were hints that the company would follow this path way before the announcement, though, as Abby Johnson, the CEO of the company, has been a crypto enthusiasts for quite some time now.

Fidelity has started to research the crypto market in 2014 and examined mining in 2015, but it was only at the end of 2017, according to Jessop’s interview, that the company really had found the space to look for investor in the institutional space.

Tom Jessop believes that the market will grow a lot when people are able to see beyond the hype and the market actually reaches the point in which it will have matured completely. According to him, you have to educate people beyond the point in which they open their eyes to the real potential of cryptos.

The Block Crypto has also reported that, due to its size, Fidelity might have an edge when compared to some smaller providers of institutional custody solutions like Coinbase and BitGo. As the market still needs reliable solutions for investors of this type, there is a clear space for Fidelity to carve its place in the market and grow beyond the efforts of companies like Coinbase.

Fidelity is also set on offering brokerage solutions, a market in which companies like Coinbase are still trying to break in but without much success at the moment.

Fidelity Investments Quietly Discloses Bitcoin Mining Operations Since 2015

"We've Actually Been Mining Since 2015" - Fidelity Let Slip

Well, it's amazing just how much can come out simply by accident. With the latest example being by Fidelity this week, Without anyone really taking notice of the large-scale implications involved.

For those otherwise unfamiliar, Fidelity is the world's fourth largest asset management company, with a grand total of $7.2 trillion in assets which it manages to some capacity. And it has recently announced that it has been directly involved in mining Bitcoin since 2015.

They have also disclosed that they have been taking a habit to closely watching the digital asset class for at least five years, possibly to find an advantageous time to begin. These disclosures began as 'internal' communications, but has since resulted in the firm opening up an institutional custody and warehouse platform which will allow institutional firms to trade bitcoin and, it's assumed, other assets in the future (It remains unclear what specific assets they would take into consideration for trade, however.)

In the announcement, which landed the other day, resulting in an enormous splash in the cryptocurrency space, and the larger financial ecosystem as a whole, Fidelity made it clear that they aim to become a serious competitor to the likes of Bakkt, ErisX, Nasdaq, and others which are certain to follow in Fidelity's wake.

From yesterday:

“Fidelity Investments is spinning off a stand alone company dedicated exclusively 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.”

Along with this, a passage that was eloquently snuck into a small paragraph across several articles, Tom Jessop let slip that Fidelity has been researching digital assets for at least five years, and that the company has been "...mining Bitcoin since 2015."

This series of revelations brings up this one question: How much Bitcoin has Fidelity managed to mine over this span of time? And where are they keeping it all now? It makes for an interesting series of questions to answer.