Fidelity Investments, a financial services giant with approximately $2.5 trillion global assets under management, has indicated that it is seeking to add a number of cryptocurrencies it offers for trading and storage to institutional investors. The increase is meant to include the leading five cryptos.
Tom Jessop, the head of the Digital Asset Services arm at Fidelity Investments, disclosed this while answering a question posed to him in New York during the Block FS conference. Jessop also revealed that the addition is likely to take place in 2019.
Will Fidelity Digital Asset Services Focus On Securities?
Fidelity Digital Asset Services was formed as a separate entity to provide institutions with a platform to safely store and trade virtual currencies. During its formation, the platform provided storage and trading support for BTC and ETH.
In his comments, Jessop noted that the demand for the top five coins apart from Bitcoin and Ether is something they are ‘looking at.’ According to the head of the Digital Asset Services, their clients who are more than thirteen thousand are currently interested in Bitcoin and Ether due to their stake in the cryptocurrency market.
For things considered securities, Jessop noted that:
“When it comes to security tokens or tokens that are likely to be deemed securities, we are waiting for that space to develop. We have some interest, but we don’t think it’s a groundswell of interest, so our focus is really on the top, call it five-seven before we start building capabilities for the tail. But I think it will come.”
Before launching a cryptocurrency department, Fidelity conducted a stream of investigative activities and procedures for five years.
This assisted the financial giant in having an in-depth knowledge of cryptocurrencies and the distributed ledger technology that underpins them.
Jessop sees the distributed ledger technology like the internet in its early days.
Although cryptocurrencies did not record promising prices this year compared to last year, Fidelity experienced the warmth of the high prices in 2017 when it raised $70 million during a charitable donation using virtual currencies.
According to Jessop’s description, the addition may include Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Stellar, Litecoin, among others.
