Fidelity Investments is a multinational financial group that manages assets worth $4.5 billion, which makes them the 4th largest asset manager in the world.
In comparison to its closest competition Fidelity takes a friendly approach to digital assets. They started toying with Bitcoin already back in 2014. They had already established a division called Fidelity Digital Assets, which offers cryptocurrency and token trading to institutional clients. In July, they also allowed crypto to be part of their 401k retirement savings accounts.
Now they have taken the next step by partnering with the world’s largest market maker Citadel Securities and traditional investment firm Charles Schwab to create their own crypto exchange, EDX Markets. Other market maker Virtu Financial and venture capital firms Seqouia Capital and Paradigm are taking part.
EDX Markets would be connected to their brokerage service. It would therefore be available for 34.3 million accounts that currently use it. The exchange should be highly liquid thanks to aggregating liquidity from several market makers.
Fidelity says they have responded to demand for digital asset trading that would be safe and compliant. The demand largely comes from large institutions and long-term clients of Fidelity for whom new companies like Coinbase or FTX are not trustworthy.