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Fidelity Digital Is Expanding Workforce By 70% Due To Crypto Demand

The institutional buy-in through major banks and adjacent firms continues this week. Fidelity Digital is the company’s enterprise-grade solution for digital assets. In a recent story first broken by Bloomberg this week, crypto demand is leading the Fidelity division to expand staffing by roughly 70%.

Fidelity Digital: Doubling Down

The report cites an interview with Fidelity Digital Assets president Tom Jessop, who specifically called out Ether as a high-interest product in particular.

Jessop noted that 2020 was “a real breakthrough year for the space, given the interest in Bitcoin when the pandemic started.” He added that the firm has seen “more interest in Ether, so we want to be ahead of that demand.”

In present day, the digital division currently only offers custody, trading, and select services for Bitcoin; however, the asset list seems likely to expand, and Jessop also cited the firm’s desire to offer crypto trading “full-time for most of the week.”

Fidelity Investments is a Boston-based firm that oversees over $10T in assets under management. The expansion for the Fidelity Digital team is likely to result in hiring as many as 100 employees throughout Boston, Salt Lake City, and Dublin. The hiring spree will come on the heels of a November expansion late last year that brought in more than twenty engineers for development of the division’s trading and custody services.

In the first half of this year alone, Fidelity has filed for a Bitcoin ETF and announced Sherlock, an analytics tool for institutional investors in digital assets. The powerhouse investment firm also has a partnership with BlockFi, which enables institutional customers to leverage Bitcoin as collateral against cash loans. Fidelity has also made investments in firms such as Circle, the USDC stablecoin issuer. Circle is on the cusp of going public in a SPAC deal valuing the firm around $4.5B.

Meanwhile, outside of the US, the firm has also partnered with UK-based broker TP ICAP and Zodia Custody to launch a crypto trading platform.

Related Reading | Central Bank Of Portugal Approves Licenses For Crypto Exchange

Institutional Integration

In recent weeks and months, institutions such as banks and credit cards seem to continue to hit the headlines with increasing initiatives in cryptocurrencies. In the past week alone, Swiss bank Sygnum has launched Ethereum 2.0 staking, Visa reported over $1B in crypto-card spending this year thus far, and a bank in Ukraine announced the launch of a Bitcoin trading feature.

Venture capital firms also continue to pour money into the crypto space, including the likes of crypto-dedicated firms.

BTC has been the horse and carriage for Fidelity Digital Assets service offerings, but that could soon be expanded as customers diversify in digital asset demands.  | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

Related Reading | How Coinbase, Square, And Fidelity Will Support Bitcoin

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Goldman Sachs Partners With Galaxy Digital For Bitcoin Futures

Goldman Sachs furthering investment into bitcoin, and even crypto more broadly, shouldn’t surprise anyone too much by now. The top-tier global investment and financial services firm has emphasized this quarter as the one to get their crypto services in swing, and this recent partnership announcement falls in line with exactly that.

The Partnership Perspective: Galaxy Digital

According to a CNBC report, Goldman Sachs is teaming up with Mike Novogratz’s crypto merchant bank, Galaxy Digital. The partnership will enable Galaxy Digital to be Goldman’s liquidity provider for bitcoin futures buy and sell orders on the CME Group derivatives exchange.

In a statement regarding the partnership, head of digital assets for Goldman Sach’s Asia-Pacific region Max Minton said “our goal is to equip our clients with best-execution pricing and secure access to the assets they want to trade. In 2021, this now includes crypto, and we are pleased to have found a partner with a broad range of liquidity venues and differentiated derivatives capabilities spanning the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”

The team at Galaxy Digital is of course optimistic looking forward; Galaxy co-president Damien Vanderwilt went on the record in an interview last week stating that “once one bank is out there doing this, the other banks will have [fear of missing out] and they’ll get on-boarded because their clients have been asking for it”. Vanderwilt’s suggestion that other banks will follow suit is certainly not out of the question, either. “There’s a whole dynamic with the major banks that I’ve seen time and time again: safety in numbers”, said Vanderwilt.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Flash Crash Pauses As Goldman Sachs Announces Crypto Services

More “Bank” For Your Buck

Banks are understandably timid when it comes to diving in, but crypto derivatives have been a speculative tool that many see as a gateway for more financial services firms to get involved. This is because of strict regulations that make bitcoin difficult to maneuver around traditionally, but more streamlined in the derivatives landscape.

The partnership news comes less than a week following reports that Goldman Sachs is planning to offer clients the ability to trade options and futures in ethereum. Additionally, the news comes just a few short months after the company resurrected plans from roughly four years ago around a cryptocurrency trading desk. That trading desk, sure enough, came to life last month.

Speculation is abound that the recent partnership for Goldman could apply pressure on the rest of the institutional marketplace to follow in their tracks.

Crypto's continued emergence throughout 2021 have reeled in traditional investors to apply pressure financial services companies to service crypto assets. | Source: CRYPTOCAP on TradingView.com

Related Reading | Goldman Sachs Files For An ETF With Option To Invest In Bitcoin

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