Yesterday in a blog post on ‘Medium’ the American financial service platform- ‘Fidelity’ announced that it is ready to for the ‘final testing and process refinement periods.’ The company made an initial announcement in October about the creation of technical and operational capacity that is required for ‘securing, trading and supporting digital assets with the exacting oversight.’ The company is mainly focusing on institutional investors and not the retail investors.
An excerpt from the announcement made by Fidelity-
“We are currently serving a select set of eligible clients as we continue to build our initial solutions. We have established a robust set of technical and operational standards at a level that institutions have come to expect from Fidelity. […] We are committed to exceeding the requirements and standards of existing solutions with both our custody platform and trading venue — providing a combination of security and a central point of market access, disrupting the obfuscated nature of trading digital assets today.”
Further, in the announcement, the company revealed that it is mainly focusing on a ‘select group of clients.’ The blog highlighted the importance if the initial clients for the company, as this serves as a protocol basis for the company to serve other institutions in the future, once the testing is successfully done.
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It is interesting how the idea of the ‘Digital Assets’ was born. Another blog post from the company blog explains how a ‘select team of blockchain technologists, product managers, financial and legal specialists’ brainstormed the idea in the ‘Blockchain Incubator in Fidelity Center for Applied Technology(often called FCAT and previously referred to as Fidelity Labs.)’ FCAT is the hub of imaginations, academic partnerships, research, innovative technologies, prototypes, testing and so much more. The announcement of the ‘Fidelity Digital Asset Services’ was made last year in October. In this announcement, the company revealed that it will cater to custody and trade execution services.
Yesterday’s blog also revealed that the company is working hand in hand with the auditors to make sure that it is complying with the rules and regulations. The endeavor is to quickly adapt the ongoing operational processes to the new crypto platform.
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If we talk about the custody services offered by Fidelity, in the late January there were reports of the company to launch its custody services in March this year. As per the reports from Bloomberg on 29th Jan, the company will launch its Bitcoin (BTC) custody offering in March. The investment firm administers more than 7.2 Trillion Dollars in client assets. Custody services allow investors to safely keep their valuable assets such as money, securities, and other valuable commodities such as gold and diamonds. Custody services may sound similar to bank custody services, but they are different as they are not allowed to use the stored assets for their gains.
