Fidelity Investments, the American financial services giant, will soon be offering its crypto services in Europe as well.
It will do so through its subsidiary, Fidelity Digital Assets, already active in the crypto market in America.
In fact, Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest investment fund managers, has established a new British unit to offer crypto services to European customers.
Fidelity Digital Assets has been offering custody and trading instruments to financial institutions in the United States since 2018, and since November 2019 it has also received the go-ahead from the regulators of the State of New York where it will be able to offer its services even to Wall Street investors.
The British based Fidelity Digital Assets was established on December 16th and is expected to be a platform offering digital asset services to European companies, including hedge funds and family offices.
Initially, only bitcoin services will be provided, but in the future, it hopes to support other digital assets as well.
Fidelity Digital Assets’ chief operating officer, Michael O’Reilly, said:
“Obviously we’ll make sure that we’re compliant with any UK or any other licenses that are required, but at this point our understanding is that we do not require any additional licensing to do this in the UK.
Both the fintech and crypto communities in London are strong and that’s evident from what we’ve seen from client demand or client requests”.
Chris Tyrer, former managing director of investment bank Barclays, has been appointed as head of Fidelity Digital Assets Europe. Tyrer joined Fidelity in April 2019 and has been identifying potential customers in London ever since. In addition, when he was at Barclays, Tyrer led a project which explored opportunities related to cryptocurrencies.
Fidelity Investments has actually been active in the industry since 2014 when it began developing crypto products with its Blockchain Incubator in Boston.
Now, after the US and Europe, it is preparing to consider further expansion opportunities in Asia.
