Marc Serafino
Fidelity Investments has started allowing clients to view their holdings of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies held through digital wallet provider Coinbase, Reuters is reporting.
Previously tested with the Boston-based money manager’s employees, the initiative is a rare example of an established financial services company warming up to cryptocurrencies. In that sense, this is a promising step that will help make cryptocurrencies mainstream. So far, these digital assets are mostly bought and sold by tech-savvy individuals and rich speculators.
The system went live last week, when most Fidelity clients were able to authorize Coinbase to provide the fund manager with data on their holdings.
Through the new offering, Fidelity hopes to learn more about digital currencies. “This is an experiment in the spirit of learning what these crypto assets are like and how our customers may want to interact with them,” Hadley Stern, senior VP and managing director at Fidelity Labs, said in an interview.
He added that the recent appreciation in Bitcoin’s value is not the main reason behind this initiative; rather it is part of the company’s wider efforts around cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology – blockchain.
For what it’s worth, Fidelity is by no means the only financial company looking to take advantage of the blockchain technology — pretty much all major banks are exploring the ways how they could use it to improve their operations. And according to a recent Accenture report, blockchain could save the 10 largest banks $8 to $12 billion a year in infrastructure costs — representing up to 30 percent of their total costs in the sector.
The intention to launch the Coinbase integration was announced by Fidelity’s CEO Abigail Johnson at an industry conference in May. At that time, the company has already been accepting bitcoin payments in its cafeteria, only to find out technology’s flaws as a means of payments.
“But I am still a believer — and 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,” Johnson said at the time.
