The United States-based Fidelity Investment, a leading financial services company has is Ready to Take over the Europe market. , On 17 December 2019 – Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s most diversified financial services firms, announced that it is establishing a new entity to serve European institutions investing in digital assets, Institutional clients will enjoy a range of services, including trade execution and custody services.

Besides institutions, the entity will also deal with Europe based hedge funds, market intermediaries and more. The company already has a long list of U.S. clients.

Investors were awaiting Fidelity Digital Assets Europe division

Head of Corporate Business Development for Fidelity Investments and president of Fidelity Digital Assets,  Tom Jessop says that ever since the company tasted huge success in the US market, it planned to enter Europe as well.

Tom Jessop Said “SaysSince launching Fidelity Digital Assets in the U.S. over a year ago, we’ve seen significant interest and engagement by the institutional community, which show no signs of slowing We’re also encouraged by continued corporate and venture investment in market infrastructure companies as well as the entry of traditional exchanges into the digital assets ecosystem. Continue Read…

Fidelity Digital Assets Has Interesting Plans For Europe.

Fidelity Digital Assets Europe will provide myriad services to its European clients well. The range of services will focus on foundational solutions that will act as building blocks for these financial institutions.

The key services entail custody service, providing institutions secured and compliant storage solutions. Also, it Will offer vaulted cold storage, cyber controls, and multi-level physical storage solutions. and trade execution services that help clients carry out high-speed trades on a liquidity-rich platform. As Well as It will include its time-tested smart order router and internal crossing engine, Chris Tyrer will head the Fidelity Digital Assets Europe operations.

In a recent interview, Tom Jessop, the president of Fidelity Digital Assets spoke about Fidelity’s plans.

During it, the host asked him about the company’s attempt to provide custody for other digital currency like Ethereum.

Jessop answered that the firm carried out a lot of work on it. He also said that if client demand exists, then Fidelity Digital Assets could support Ethereum in 2020.

Obstacles to institutional crypto adoption

The digital asset launched earlier this year, Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS) offers cryptocurrency custody. As well as trading tools for institutional investors and traders. However, the firm only supports Bitcoin which some analysts say keeps FDAS from challenging crypto-native firms like Coinbase and BitGo.

At the same time, Jessop cited obstacles to institutional crypto adoption. He mentioned factors like price volatility, lack of regulatory clarity.

Also, Jessop said that the lack of a track-record serves as one of the biggest obstacles to institutional adoption of a given cryptocurrency. He noted that Bitcoin holds the longest track record. Thus, the cryptocurrency gets a stronger appetite from institutional investors to allocate capital to the crypto, as compared to cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. Hence, the reason Fidelity isn’t supporting it at the moment, he added.

Quoting Jessop: “How do I know that if I buy this thing, it’s gonna be around tomorrow?. Like what indication of durability or longevity exists based on the fact that the history of this asset is 10 years old?”

“I think many of these things solve themselves with time,” he added.

Custody should be a base requirement

In the interview, Jessop also spoke about how custody should be a base requirement on the hierarchy of needs. He referred to custody as a service that needs to be delivered to people to create a sense of safety and soundness. He believes other factors like trading builds on custody.

Quoting him: “We’re an organization that’s been around for decades. We’re also not necessarily thinking about the next 18 to 24 months, we’re thinking about three-plus years in terms of the evolution of the space, and what the potentials for financial services at large.”