Fidelity, a $2.46 Trillion Asset Management Company, Rolls Out Crypto Custody Solution

One of the largest asset managers in the world, Fidelity has rolled out its crypto custody solution.

A Boston-based mutual fund that has about $2.46 trillion assets under management last year announced the launch of a separate company Fidelity Digital Assets, with the goal to offer trade execution and institutional custody services.

Now, the company has having a “full rollout” of its custody and trading services for digital assets, reported the Financial Times.

Scarcity of Big, Regulated Institutions in the Chaotic World of Digital Assets

During the interview, Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson said what started as “just for fun” in 2014 with just research and development efforts is nowhere to stay and “a boon to what is a fragmented and complicated industry.”

In 2015, the company started mining bitcoin and then next year tested its first wallet and storage solution with employees.

During this time, the company saw a “steady evolution of institutional demand for custody and trading services” and decided to introduce a solution to meet those needs and “hoping to profit from the scarcity of big, regulated institutions in the chaotic world of digital assets.”

Custody service, Johnson said is a “big selling point,” as people need somebody to hold their digital assets for them as part of their inheritance plan.

“There are people out there with significant amounts of wealth in cryptocurrencies, probably bitcoin, and they’re looking for somebody to hold those coins for them because in the event of their passing — which is going to happen at some point or another — you’ve got to have a plan to be able to get those coins to somebody else,”

Johnson said.

Coinbase Custody Not a problem

In terms of “financial relationships that you have with either a bank or a brokerage firm,” the crypto space, Johnson said is “nascent and just not developed” yet.

However, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s custody solution already stores billions of dollars of assets for its customers. But Fidelity isn’t concerned about that as Johnson says they have an advantage here as Coinbase is “still a company that most people had never heard of, and they don’t have the existing relationships with the independent advisers.”

After a year of pushing for “institutional money,” Fidelity is all set to introduce its custody solution for a market which Johnson says is “not going away, as long as the value is there, people will look to preserve that value.”