Boston-based Fidelity Investments has launched a new business that will build infrastructure for institutional investors to trade in cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, the company announced Monday.
The new company Fidelity Digital Asset Services LLC, (Fidelity Digital) will offer custody and trade execution services for digital assets, commonly referred to as cryptocurrencies, to sophisticated institutional investors such as hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries, Fidelity says in a news release.
“We started exploring blockchain and digital assets several years ago, and those efforts have been successful in helping us understand and advance our thinking around cryptocurrencies. 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,” says Tom Jessop, head of Fidelity Digital
“Fidelity believes distributed ledger technologies can enable entirely new business models, lead to the creation of frictionless capital markets and improve existing financial market infrastructure. Fidelity can envision a world where all types of assets are issued natively on a blockchain or represented in tokenized format,” the company says.
Fidelity Digital was created in the firm’s blockchain incubator, which continues to research blockchain technology and digital assets.
“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,” says Abigail Johnson, chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments, in a statement.