The digital arm of financial services giant Fidelity Investments is working towards boosting its workforce by 70% in response to increasing institutional demand for cryptocurrency.
- In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday (July 12th, 2021), the President of Fidelity Digital Assets, Tom Jessop, revealed that apart from hedge funds and family offices, retirement funds and corporate treasuries are now seeking some exposure to crypto assets.
- As a result of the growing demand, the company is looking to hire at least 100 new employees who could see its staff strength increase by about 70%.
- The new workers would be deployed to Boston, Salt Lake City, and Dublin. Also, the employees would assist in developing new products and expanding beyond bitcoin into other cryptocurrency assets.
- While Fidelity Digital only offers custody and trading services for bitcoin, Jessop stated that the company had seen increased interest in ether, leading to an increase in the size of its workers.
- Another reason Fidelity Digital is expanding its workforce is that it intends to operate cryptocurrency trading on a full-time basis, with the branch’s president saying, “we want to be at a place where it’s full-time for most of the week.”
Speaking on the crypto interest from clients, Jessop said:
“Bitcoin has been the entry for a lot of institutions. 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.”
- Despite the current market downturn, institutional appetite for crypto remains unabated, with participants saying this current period is a perfect opportunity for consolidation and growth.
- Back in May, CryptoPotato reported that a “long-only” strategy was profitable for most crypto funds. In June, survey of hedge fund managers showed that 98% of them are looking to increase their crypto portfolio allocation to 7.2% in the next five years.