dailyhodl.com
Fidelity Investments is reportedly looking into the possibility of offering Bitcoin (BTC) trading to individual investors four years after launching its digital assets platform.
Citing people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reports that the financial giant is considering allowing individual investors to trade the flagship crypto asset on its brokerage platform.
Fidelity has yet to share its plan with its client, but Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz says the news already reached him. As stated by Novogratz at the SALT conference in New York on Monday,
“A bird told me that Fidelity, a little bird in my ear, is going to shift their retail customers into crypto soon enough. I hope that bird is right. And so we are seeing this institutional march.”
Fidelity has been mulling expanding support to Bitcoin trading months after giving 401 (k) plan holders the option to allocate a portion of their retirement savings to the king crypto if their employers allow them.
The move received criticism from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and members of the senate who raised concerns that the volatile nature of crypto will not guarantee Bitcoin’s long-term profitability and viability as a hedge against inflation.
US Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tina Smith and Richard Durbin penned in a letter to Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson in July, calling the idea “troubling.”
“While we appreciate Fidelity’s efforts to help working Americans realize a more secure retirement, this decision is immensely troubling.
Perhaps most troubling is that in pointing to the risks of investing in Bitcoin on its website and planning to cap plan participants’ Bitcoin exposure to 20 percent, Fidelity is acknowledging it is well aware of the dangers associated with investing in Bitcoin and digital assets, yet is deciding to move ahead anyway.”