Fidelity Investments has launched a new company focused on custody and trade execution services for digital assets.
The new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, will support the trading and custody of cryptocurrencies for institutional investors such as hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries.
Fidelity decided to create this new division following a survey it conducted which identified around 70 per cent of institutional investors are expecting new assets will emerge on the back of advancing technology like blockchain.
Its new unit will provide a secure, compliant and institutional-grade omnibus storage solution for Bitcoin, Ether and other digital assets. Services include vaulted cold storage, and multi-level physical and cyber controls.
The company uses an internal crossing engine and smart order router for trade execution of assets.
All users have access to a dedicated team of specialists to support their engagement at all points.
“Our goal is to make digitally-native assets, such as bitcoin, more accessible to investors,” said Abigail P. Johnson, Chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments. “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.”
The company sees distributed ledger technology chaining business models, and establish a frictionless capital market with an improved financial market infrastructure.
Fidelity Digital Assets head Tom Jessop said, “In our conversations with institutions, they tell us that in order to engage with digital assets in a meaningful way, they need a trusted platform provider to enter this space.
“These institutions require a sophisticated level of service and security, equal to the experience they’re used to when trading stocks or bonds. With Fidelity Digital Assets, we’re building a scalable infrastructure for digital assets that meets the expectations of what it means to work with Fidelity, while leveraging unique capabilities of the blockchain to create a completely new offering.”
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