Daily Hopium: Fidelity Hires 100 Additional Employees To Manage Crypto Operations
The crypto market is having a choppy, bearish week, but there is no shortage of bullish institutional news to be grabbed by the horns. Case in point: financial services giant Fidelity Investments is set to expand its crypto-focused team, Loyalty digital assets (FDA), by 70%.
According to a Bloomberg report this week, the chairman of the asset manager, Tom Jessop, confirmed that the FDA is looking to add about 100 employees to its offices in Boston, Salt Lake City and Dublin.
There are currently 18 openings on the firm’s career portal. Unfortunately, Casual Work From Home Consultant with no Blockchain experience is not one of them.
In partnership with crypto lender BlockFi, the FDA offers custody of crypto assets as well as a trading desk. It also allows institutional clients to engage Bitcoin as collateral against cash loans.
Since the crypto markets do not have a closing bell and are open 24/7, Fidelity also seeks to offer exchanges during most hours of “most of the week”, this which should appeal to crypto traders like this:
In the ether
Ethereum moonboys (Editor’s note: moon people) will particularly like Jessop’s: “We have seen more interest from Ether, so we want to be ahead of this request.”
This should keep the fact that ETH has fallen back below US $ 2,000 this week from some sort of perspective.
“Bitcoin has been the entrance to many institutions,” explained Jessop. “It really opens a window to what else is going on in space. “
Fidelity probably isn’t the only institution scouring the interwebs right now for talent wearing hoodies. The second largest bank in the United States, Bank of America, is also taking a crypto step. According to Bloomberg, BoA is in the process of creating a team “dedicated to researching crypto assets and related technologies.”
Recap: The herd has arrived, and it is still coming
Former Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz, now CEO of Digital galaxy, said to all those who cared about it a good year ago that the “herd is coming”. He was referring to institutional players entering the world of crypto investing.
It can sometimes feel more like an Easter show than a full scramble, but when you start to list them all, he wasn’t wrong.
Over the past six months to a year, the cryptoverse has been presented to many fund managers with billions of dollars coming out of their pockets and dominating the headlines.
Some of them also have Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) applications that accumulate in the SEC bin. Crypto commentators and influencers such as Lark Davis and Alex Saunders often remind their followers that a Bitcoin ETF is all about “when not if”.
There are currently 13 #bitcoin ETF applications in the United States sit before the SEC. Here’s what happened to gold when US ETFs were finally approved. It basically started a 7 year bull run. pic.twitter.com/w1XBjxCiIo
– Alouette Davis (@TheCryptoLark) July 9, 2021
Some notable big players include Cathie Wood’s, who are fully defending or playing the crypto space, or just getting into the water. Ark Invest, the Winklevoss twins Gemini, Shades of grey, big financial institutions in Korea, plus more US investment banking giants than you can find with a hardware wallet.
In addition to Fidelity and BoA, Morgan stanley, JP Morgan, BlackRock (“Splash around”, apparently) and Goldman Sachs have all increased their exposure to crypto this year. The latter recently labeled and legitimized Bitcoin as a “new asset class” in its own right.
Laser eyes and sovereign states
Then there are legendary types of Wall Street hedge funds such as Paul Tudor Jones, Ray dalio and the second richest man in Mexico, Ricardo Salinas Pilego… All with one toe, one foot or more plunged directly into the orange room.
And let’s not forget You’re here (okay, who knows what Elon’s Dogecoin game really is), Pay Pal, Visa, MasterCard and MicroStrategyMichael Saylor, the BTC permabull with laser eyes.
News from June that El Salvador passed a bill in seemingly record-breaking time to accept Bitcoin as legal tender is also gaining traction and helping to float positive sentiment.
And its neighbor in Central America, Paraguay, is also said to be looking to adopt Bitcoin. Although, perhaps not quite in the same way as El Salvador, according to a Decrypt report and the leaking a bill proposed by Congressman Carlos Rejala on Wednesday.
But it all only scratches the surface. There is so much global institutional interest that it’s hard to keep pace. Of course, there’s a good chance that some of those lately-beloved johnny-come-hats brought their much-loved market manipulation games with them. Perhaps.
We will definitely keep an eye on Guggenheim Investments CIO Scott Minerd’s next Bitcoin price analysis. Maybe he can divide the difference between the best BTC prediction of US $ 600,000 he made in February and the US $ 10,000 he requested last week or so.
Just a reminder, Scott Minerd will tell you that Bitcoin is a “buy” when it exceeds 100k.
– Ryan Cantering Clark (@CanteringClark) July 9, 2021
