A top Fidelity Digital Assets executive says the company will be expanding its institutional crypto services to include Ethereum and retail clients at some point in the future, but it is not in any hurry.
Christine Sandler, the head of sales and marketing at the firm, a separate cryptocurrency clearing and custody entity launched last year by Fidelity Investments, one of the largest asset managers in the world, says in an Unchained Podcast interview:
“We think about it all of the time, and we do get, look, and we do obviously, get a lot of inbound interest from retail clients. And as we said before though, for us to be a really great institutional provider, we have to remain focused on this institutional client and not to take away from that focus…
“It’s not on the near-term roadmap to offer access to retail. Retail has some wonderful robust options, whether it’s players like PayPal and Square that are known to them where they use them all the time, or a more digitally native offering like Coinbase.”
Ethereum on horizon
Ethereum is definitely on Fidelity’s agenda as well, says Sandler, including support for staking, but no launch date has been set.
“It’s clearly on the road map. I would be remiss if I could state a date, but definitely on the road map… I think to be a digital asset custodian, and offering proof of stake assets, you definitely have to offer staking services. It puts you at a disadvantage, so I would expect us to build up those services once we can support Ethereum.”
But for now the main focus is bitcoin.
“To be quite candid, most of what we hear is bitcoin. On occasion, we do hear from investors that are seeking access to Ethereum, but most of what we still hear is bitcoin,” she says. “So, the predominant institutional narrative is around bitcoin.”