In an attempt to make digital assets such as bitcoin more accessible to the mainstream, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager, Fidelity Investments, has revealed its plans to launch a separate firm in order to offer trade execution and cryptocurrency custody services to financial institutions.
The company, which boasts of over 27 million customers and USD 7.2 trillion in their assets, cited the proven institutional demand for digital products as its driving force for the move. Fidelity Investments aims to help institutional bitcoin investors to their multibillion-dollar portfolio.
Fidelity Digital Asset Services
According to CNBC reports, the new company, named Fidelity Digital Asset Services, is expected serve as a link between institutional stakeholders and the retail-focused crypto market; which has lately planned to focus on serving interested institutional investors.
While speaking in a recent press release, the Chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson, talked about the company’s plan to keep venturing for an extended period of time. Johnson was quoted saying; “Our goal is to make digitally-native assets, such as bitcoin, more accessible to investors. 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 new venture will be led by Tom Jessop, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs before joining blockchain startup Chain as president in 2017 and then Fidelity in 2018 as head of corporate business development.
Based on his experience in the crypto and blockchain sector, Tom Jessop has been chosen to head the new venture. Jessop had moved blockchain startup Chain as the president last year, after previously spending 17 years at Goldman Sachs. Jessop explained to CNBC.
“We saw that there were certain things institutions needed that only a firm like Fidelity could provide,” “We’ve got some technology that we’ve repurposed from other parts of Fidelity — we can leverage all of the resources of a big organization.”
