Fidelity to Double their Digital Asset Branch to Support Ethereum Services

Fidelity Digital Asset Services LLC plans to bolster its team by adding 210 workers to the team as they predict there will be a rising demand for cryptocurrency amid market volatility, according to a Wall Street Journal Report. 

The digital asset service launched a few years ago is a Fidelity Investment subsidiary allowing institutional investors to store and trade Bitcoin. Now they plan to double their headcount in the form of 110 tech workers, including engineers and digital infrastructure developers, along with 100 customer-service specialists. 

This announcement came via Fidelity’s president, Tom Jessop, by way of the Wall Street Journal. This expansion comes a little more than a month after Fidelity Investments said they would allow certain retirement funds to put Bitcoin into their 401(k) accounts later this year. 

While this gives investors another opportunity and direction for their retirement accounts, it has come with a certain amount of scrutiny. The primary concers are of course financial and environmental. As far as the financial concerns go, advisers are warring that investing up to the the allotted 20% to Bitcoin is an extremely high percentage to allocate to one asset. In addition, extreme market volatility and the unknown nature of the digital asset give financial advisors more reasons to scrutinize the cryptocurrency in a 401(k). Furthermore, becuase Bitcoin mining takes up a considerable amount of energy, environmentalists are fearful that adding Bitcoin to a more mainstream form of finance will only increase the demand and therefore the energy use. 

Jessop said that the 110 additional technology hires would help build out infrastructure to support Ethereum trading services. The new-formed team will also help migrate platform data and applications to the cloud to support faster transactions, 24-hour trading support and top tier level security. 

Despite the recent market crash that has seen Bitcoin drop to around $30,000, Ethereum to less than $2,000 and two once prominent coins, TerraUSD (UST) and LUNA, to virtually nothing, Jessop remains optimistic. 

“We’re trying not to focus on the downturns and focus on some of the long-term indicators,” said Jessop, reported by the Wall Street Journal.  “We are trying to build infrastructure for the future because we measure success over years and decades, not weeks and months.”

Jessop joined Fidelity in January 2018, after he was president of Chain Inc., a blockchain firm, for nine months. Prior to Chain, Jessop had a 17-year career at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. where he held various senior positions. 

While Jessop acknowledged the recent turmoil and volatility in the market, he said the effects on Fidelity Digital Assets have been minimal. The digital asset branch at Fidelity currently boasts around 400 clients ranging from registered investment advisers to hedge funds and asset managers. 

Author: Tyler Irvin

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