The world’s 4th largest asset manager of $2.4 trillion assets, Fidelity Investments that provides fund distribution, retirement services, life insurance, wealth management among other services is going to launch crypto products before this year ends as per its CEO Abigail Johnson.


World’s 4th largest asset manager officially goes crypto

The world’s fourth-largest asset manager Fidelity Investments is gearing up to raise the bar of institutional involvement into the crypto market. It has been revealed by its CEO Abigail Johnson that the company is working on a number of blockchain and cryptocurrency related products and offerings that will be rolled out in the next few months.

At the Boston Fintech Week Conference, Johnson declined to provide further details as she shared:

“We’ve got a few things underway, a few things that are partially done but also kind of on the shelf because it’s not really the right time. We hope to have some things to announce by the end of the year.”

Johnson has always been crypto friendly as last year, in one of her public addresses, she praised Bitcoin stating

“I love this stuff.” She has also shared that blockchain technology will “fundamentally change market structures, and maybe even the architecture of the Internet itself,” before further adding, “I am still a believer. It’s no accident that I’m one of the few standing before you today from a large financial services firm that hasn’t given up on digital currencies.”

So, it comes as a no surprise that asset manager giant that has $2.4 trillion in assets under management is going to immerse themselves into the crypto market by this year itself.


Also, read: Major Crypto Exchanges Under the Regulatory Fire for Price Manipulation

Fidelity investments’ crypto connection only strengthening

However, this isn’t the first crypto move of Fidelity as previously it has been reportedly involved in crypto mining. Also, it bought 15% stake in Dash masternode company.

Crypto mining started as part of its operation to better understand the new sector which turned out to be profitable as Johnson explains:

“We never thought we’d make money, but we figured it would be a good idea because we’d get in at the ground level and we’d learn something.”

Just a few years back in 2015, Fidelity Charitable, an independent public charity organization of the firm allowed the philanthropists to donate using Bitcoin. This has certainly been a success as last year about $69 million has been donated in Bitcoin among other cryptos that are approximately 10 times to that of the previous year as per the organization.

About this charity in crypto, Johnson shared:

“That was a surprising hit. It worked out because there were so many people, newly incredibly wealthy through Bitcoin, who were looking to become philanthropists. We made it really easy for them.”

Apparently, Fidelity has jumped into the crypto without any preconceived notions as she says,

“What we started with was building a long list of use cases for either Bitcoin, Ethereum, other cryptocurrencies, or potentially just raw blockchain technology. Most of them have been scrapped by now or at least put on the shelf. The things that actually survived were not the things I think necessarily we expected. We were trying to listen to the marketplace and anticipate what would make sense.”

Just last week, reports of Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch jumping on the crypto bandwagon permeated the market. No big institutions want to be left behind in this rapidly evolving industry, everyone wants a piece of bitcoin among other cryptos.

As Fidelity Investments, one of the largest financial institutions in the world that provides fund distribution, retirement services, life insurance, wealth management, and securities execution & clearance, continues to maintain its friendly stance towards crypto, it will enjoy a lot of hype and interest from the crypto world. Though the company has yet to deliver a product, if it does, the giant can further boost the crypto adoption and take it mainstream.

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