Both the European and Asia branches of Fidelity International are exploring the perception of customers towards cryptocurrencies via a newly launched trading simulator specifically designed for digital assets.
Fidelity International’s European and Asian branches have started to explore blockchain and the perception of customers towards cryptocurrencies. They have launched a new trading simulator specifically designed for digital assets.
It all started just a day ago when Fidelity USA announced they are making beneficial steps towards the introduction of cryptocurrency trading services. A simulator game that is currently ongoing for Fidelity International staff enables people to play around with up to $12,500 in fake currency. The report indicates the between 1,200 and 8,000 members are taking part in the game.
Executive director at Global Digital Finance Teana Baker-Taylor, said Fidelity International’s efforts in the market could be a “milestone moment” for the developing sector.
She said that this shows to the market that traditional financial investment in digital assets is likely to increase and they intend to maintain their institutional first-mover advantage, providing access to digital assets to their mutual fund and pension clients, as well as private and institutional investors.
Anne Richards, chief executive of Fidelity International said:
“We have a bitcoin trading game that we use internally, as a way of teaching people about distributed ledger technology and digital tokenisation, which ultimately will be an important part of the whole financial system going forward.”
Fidelity Investments became the first major player in institutional custody to offer cryptocurrency custody and trade execution operations with the launch of Fidelity Digital Assets already last year.
Tom Jessop, New York-based president of Fidelity Digital Assets then said that the new entity welcomed its first institutional client in December and has added several more this year. He also added that there was demand from the crypto hedge funds and the other hedge funds that led the company to believe there was a market opportunity and it was with a little bit of conviction that others would follow. He compared with a “chicken and egg.
Gabriel Altbach, founder of Asset Management Insights commented:
“Fidelity, both internationally and in the US, has been on the front foot in the space, signifying they are looking to be perceived as innovative and open to some risk-taking.”
Last month some big names like Galaxy Digital and Genesis Global Trading have switched to Fireblocks, Fidelity’s Investment Arm Funding Crypto-Security Firm, in order to safeguard the transmission of their digital assets across exchanges, over the counter brokerages, hot wallets, and cold storage.
Also, let’s not forget that a July 22 is a launch date for Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures beta-testing. This presents a valuable measure for the entire industry as it will set a new standard for accessing cryptocurrency markets. At the moment, the participation of institutional investors in the digital currency market is still constrained due to a number of infrastructural and regulatory issues.
One of them is also Arca, an American institutional-grade investment manager, who is allegedly seeking regulatory approval to issue digitized securities on blockchain, according to a filing document released on April 12. They are using Fidelity as a custodian and their co-founder and chief legal officer Philip Liu said:
next“Big players like Fidelity coming into this space and saying ‘we’ll custody your bitcoin’ … that type of assurance is invaluable. The big players will be critical for future adoption.”