The Wall Street Journal reported that Fidelity Investments may allow retail investors to trade bitcoin, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Fidelity Investments is considering allowing individual investors to trade bitcoin on its brokerage platform. The publication cited people close to the matter, saying that Fidelity hadn’t told clients yet, but that it was working on bringing the investment option to more than 34.3 million brokerage accounts.
Galaxy Digital CEO and one of Fidelity’s earliest crypto clients Mike Novogratz has also talked about Fidelity’s plan to bring crypto to retail clients. Novogratz was speaking at the SALT conference, saying,
“A bird told me that Fidelity, a little bird in my ear, is going to shift their retail customers into crypto soon enough. I hope that bird is right. And so we are seeing this institutional march.”
Currently, Fidelity allows bitcoin to be a part of its 401k retirement accounts. This attracted attention from those inside the industry as well as the government. Lawmakers are concerned given that they believe that crypto is a risky asset class that could impact savings.
Fidelity, a long-time proponent of bitcoin
Fidelity has long been a supporter of bitcoin — the company has been mining BTC since 2015 and bought 7.4% of the bitcoin mining company Marathon across four index-based funds. Through its mining operations, the firm has made a decent sum of money.
Its bitcoin 401k accounts have been receiving most of the attention in recent months. Fintech startups have also been joining in on the 401k bandwagon, with Bitcoin IRA and ForUsAll also offering or working on related investment options.
Fidelity is also expanding its offerings to include a Metaverse ETF. The Fidelity Metaverse ETF allows investment in the fast-growing space, and this may also prove to be popular among investors interested in web3.
Novogratz also hints at retail investor expansion
Novogratz’s word on the retail foray of Fidelity is an optimistic sign. The company’s CEO, Abigail Johnson, has also said that the long-term goal is to expand access, which is another sign that retail investors may not be far away.
Reports in the past have said that Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial were building a crypto trading platform with Fidelity and Charles Schwab. In any case, it seems like the crypto market is set to expand in the years to come.
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