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Fidelity's new Fidelity Digital Assets Service (FDAS) may take some time to support other cryptos than Bitcoin (BTC). In a recent interview with CoinDesk, FDAS head Tom Jessop claimed that the hardfork may delay support for Ethereum (ETH).
FDAS offers a custodial solution that will allow institutional investors to get exposure to crypto without any of the risks or technical expertise involved with holding it. The service will initially just offer support for Bitcoin (BTC), but other tokens are planned.
According to Jessop, the additional cryptos listed "will probably go in market cap order, that’s where the demand is but it doesn’t mean that we will list every coin...There may be reasons why we [won’t list] a coin that have nothing to do with quite frankly client [demand]." He mentioned Ethereum Classic (ETC) as one crypto that may not be supported, or at least not until the security issues involved with its recent 51 percent attack are resolved.
As for Ethereum (ETH), whether FDAS supports it will depend on how the recent Constantinople hardfork pans out.
Jessop claimed that FDAS plans to scale gradually over the rest of 2019, acquiring all the necessary licenses in order to cover around 90 percent of the U.S. by the end of the year. The service has "seen consistent interest from institutions...largely because institutions have been doing their homework and returned to understand the space, and quite frankly wouldn’t make a decision to invest at any price until they really understood their own personal [investment] theses".
Read more: 5 ways Fidelity and Bakkt could change cryptocurrency in 2019; Is Ethereum at $100,000 really possible?