Financial services provider Fidelity Investments is launching a cryptocurrency trading and storage platform.
Fidelity Digital Asset Services, LLC will provide cryptocurrency custody and trading services for enterprise clients, the company announced Monday.
Tom Jessup, who is heading up the new division, announced the platform at Bloombergâs Institutional Crypto event. It hopes to draw institutional investors, including hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries.
Fidelity is one of the five largest financial services providers in the world, maintaining some $7.2 trillion in client assets.
âThose efforts have been successful in helping us understand and advance our thinking around cryptocurrencies â¦Â The creation of Fidelity Digital Assets is the first step in a long-term vision to create a full-service enterprise-grade platform for digital assets,â he said, going on to add:
âIn 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 theyâre used to when trading stocks or bonds.â
As such, Fidelity plans to build a âscalable infrastructureâ that takes advantage of Fidelityâs existing experience in building such platforms, he said.
At launch, the new company will offer âinstitutional-grade custody,â trade execution and âdedicated client service,â the press release continued.
The platform will custody bitcoin, ethereum and other yet-to-be-named cryptocurrencies at launch. As part of its security system, Fidelity will hold the cryptocurrencies in cold storage, along with âmulti-level physical and cyber controls,â the release explained.
Fidelity Investments CEO and chairman Abigail Johnson said the new platformâs goal is to âmake digitally-native assets, such as bitcoin, more accessible to investors,â according to the release.
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