There’s “More Interest in Ether,” says Fidelity Digital Assets President

Fidelity Digital Assets is looking to increase its staff by about 70% as demand for cryptocurrency services from institutional investors continues to be strong. FDA is a unit of Boston-based asset manager giant Fidelity Investments Inc. The company plans to add about 100 new employees in technology and operations in Dublin, Boston, and Salt Lake City, said Tom Jessop, president of Fidelity Digital Assets, in an interview. This increased headcount will help the business develop new products and further expand into the crypto sector besides Bitcoin, he said. Last year “was a real breakthrough year for the space, given the interest in Bitcoin that accelerated when the pandemic started,” said Jessop adding.

“We’ve seen more interest in Ether, so we want to be ahead of that demand.”

Besides Fidelity Digital Assets, as we reported, a big bitcoin proponent, SkyBridge Capital, has also ventured into the second-largest cryptocurrency. The company trimmed its position in BTC to keep it from growing further and rotated “a small amount of the capital into Ethereum,” revealed Co-Chief Investment Officer​ Troy Gayeski in an interview. Gayeski defined Bitcoin as the market leader in terms of store value and Ethereum as the market leader in terms of transaction use. Institutional investor demand for Bitcoin, Ether, and other crypto-assets is only rising, said Fidelity Digital Assets’ President. He further noted that while previously their clients tended to be hedge funds and family offices, they have now expanded to retirement advisers and corporations who want to hold crypto as an asset class. “Bitcoin has been the entry for a lot of institutions,” Jessop said. “It’s now really opening up a window on what else is going on in the space.” A big shift is in “the diversity of interest” from new and existing customers, he said. The company is also pushing to offer trading throughout the week, as is the norm in the cryptocurrency industry, unlike the traditional market.

“We want to be at a place where it’s full-time for most of the week.”

Besides trading and holding Bitcoin, Fidelity Digital also allows its institutional customers to use the crypto asset as collateral against cash loans through its partnership with BlockFi. [coin_ticker symbol="ETH"] [coin_ticker symbol="BTC"]