Multinational financial services corporation Fidelity Investments will soon allow its clients to view the company’s cryptocurrency holdings on Coinbase.
Fidelity Investments Support Bitcoin, Mine It
Abigail Johnson, CEO of Boston, Massachusetts based Fidelity Investments recently gave a speech in recognition of the burgeoning potential demonstrated by Bitcoin. It’s a hot topic and one that investors are eager to consider but where financial advisers may be hesitant to recommend in anything approaching a risk averse portfolio.
However, Fidelity Investments is not only researching the field, but they are also actively encouraging investment, allowing investors to view their cryptocurrency holdings held on the Coinbase exchange.
Johnson, when speaking publicly about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, comes across from a very much evangelist position as opposed to a purely speculative one. What’s more, she revealed that the company and staff have mined Bitcoin and Ethereum, and even trialled a micro transaction canteen payment system using Bitcoin at their offices.
“If you are looking for bitcoin to beat Visa at the point of sale today, you are going to be disappointed,” Johnson said.
If you are looking at this technology as just a faster settlement system for financial transactions … also disappointing. 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.
Fidelity Sees Bitcoin’s Revolutionary Potential
Fidelity Labs, which is the research arm of the investment company offer a very optimistic and positive view of the whole of blockchain technology, detailing its potential to handle billions of financial transactions, its speed and its essentially self accounting requiring much less human intervention.
“Blockchain technology isn’t just a more efficient way to settle securities,” said Johnson.
It will fundamentally change market structures, and maybe even the architecture of the Internet itself.
Important to also note is that Fidelity has also contributed venture capital to other companies researching digital currencies. They have partnered too with the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. The news doesn’t stop there either
Fidelity Investments
Fidelity Investments have $2.13 trillion US dollars of assets under management, with a revenue of $15.9 billion US dollars. Abigail Johnson took the role of CEO from her father in 2014. They have made the news on the site before when they dropped some of their partners and began to support Bitcoin donations for their charity arm.
As mainstream financial institutions begin to embrace the potential of cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, will we see their adoption or rather their appropriation of Blockchain technology?
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, mcall.com, Forbes.com
