Fidelity Investments Acquires License for Crypto Trading in New York

New York-based Wall Street brokerage firm Fidelity Investments has been granted a license to trade in cryptocurrencies. Fidelity Investments works in the crypto business through its subsidiary, Fidelity Digital Assets Services (FDAS).

Through an official proposal, FDAS had applied for the Trust License to the New York Department of Financial Services in mid-July 2019.

The company blog post states:

“We have experienced a high level from these firms and anticipate that their increased involvement in this industry would enable more activities and development across the spectrum.”

How would the License help the Fidelity Investments FDAS?

Amidst the rumours that Fidelity Investments will prefer to serve institutional clients over retail clients, Fidelity’s digital asset subsidiary was launched in October 2018. It aims to offer crypto trading services and crypto custody to the institutional clients and also plans to spread its wings across the borders in the future.

The license will be instrumental in servicing New York-based traders in all realms of their businesses, offering cryptocurrency trading and custody services. Furthermore, it will attract more clients fetching more business on their platform.

During a recent interview, Tom Joseph, president of FDAS, commented,

“Demand for digital currencies has been shifting since the company’s launch.”

Joseph added,

“We are seeing strong demand and greater diversity of client types. There are more traditional investors. When we started, it was crypto funds and hedge funds.”

Availing the license, Fidelity’s entry into the cryptocurrency business is viewed as a breakthrough for drawing more institutional investments in this domain. This will help the investors to trade cryptocurrencies across the majority of the exchanges. They will be assured further to store these assets safely.

Fidelity bears $7 trillion assets and it claims that apart from the existing 22% of investors, 40% more are open to dive in as per their internal survey.