A Fidelity Investments branch. Nicholas Pfosi | The Boston Globe | Getty Images Fidelity Investments' new cryptocurrency company will offer trading for institutional customers in a few weeks, Bloomberg reported Monday. Betting that the cryptocurrency bear market will turn around, Fidelity created its cryptocurrency platform Fidelity Digital Assets in October. The new company began a custody service to securely store bitcoin for its customers in March, CNBC reported. Now, it will be letting customers buy and sell the cryptocurrency in the upcoming weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. Fidelity, a roughly 72-year-old family controlled firm, is primarily known for managing retirement plans and mutual funds. But it also spends $2.5 billion per year on technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain. Forty-seven percent of institutional investors think digital assets are worth investing in, according to a survey released by Fidelity on May 2. Further, of the 450 institutions interviewed by Fidelity for research for its new company, everyone from wealthy families to hedge funds to pensions, 22% of respondents already owned a cryptocurrency. Since the bitcoin boom in 2017, the world's largest cryptocurrency has dropped more than 60% since its high of almost $20,000 at the end of 2017 and was trading near $5,703 on Monday. Fidelity is only offering the crypto trade to institutional customers. Rivals like Robinhood and E-Trade Financial are taking on retail investors. Bitcoin is up more than 54% this year. Read the full Bloomberg story here.
Fi Investments is set to offer online trading — albeit only to institutional customers — in the coming weeks via crypto platform Fidelity Digital Exchange . starting in October last year , the company began offering storage services for the digital currency in March . In a survey of 450 investors , Fidelity found 22 % of respondents owned a cryptocurrency , while a separate study revealed 47 % of institutional investors believed they were worth investing .