Fidelity Digital Asset Services (FDAS) will Add More Altcoins
At the pace Coinbase is adding altcoins, it only makes sense that Fidelity will be doing the same, or at least they are exploring it. Fidelity are going to truly leverage digital assets and I’m bullish on their prospects along with Bakkt.
Basically, Fidelity Digital Assets is a company that will be providing custody and trade execution services for cryptocurrencies. When Bakkt’s idea launched you can just call “cryptocurrencies” digital assets from now on.
This is why I made the publication, Digital Asset News. In late November, 2018 FDAS hinted that the platform wants and likely will expand its services on crypto trading by launching from five to seven more coins, major by their market cap, apart from Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The consumer needs a better way to invest in these digital assets, but remember altcoins are high-risk as the decline of ICOs is demonstrating in late 2018. Will STOs and crypto funds be enough to give blockchain startup new wings? It’s unlikely the case for many that will experience coin death. But the best digital assets will rise to the surface in the next three years.
Tom Jessop, the head of Fidelity Digital Assets is worth following. This is because Custody in the age of digital assets will be different. As Millennials and GenZ will gradually invest more in crypto than the traditional stock markets. However the process needs to be simplified and made even easier with more reasonable fees. Binance, Robinhood and Coinbase are not all that should exist, but bigger players are getting skin in the game.
So which altcoins are the likely candidates? The usual suspects:
- XRP (Ripple)
- Bitcin Cash
- EOS
- Litecoin
- Stellar, on top of BTC and ETH (that makes 7).
Fidelity is one of the five largest financial services providers in the world, maintaining some $7.2 trillion in client assets. As regulation hits digital assets and crypto prices stabilize a bit like they did in the Fall of 2016, things like stable-coins could be solid digital assets designed to upgrade the global economy with principles of cryptoeconmics. Are we really going to trust an app like Coinbase with high trading fees? Or will there be much more balance and useful players pairing payments, utility tokens and incentives in a wide range of apps and businesses?
I personally think FDAS will be very fast to include sooner than later a wide range of small-cap assets. Altcoins that become part of the tier 1 will be more resistant to coin death. But knowing which will be long-term winners may take some skill and luck.
The FDAS is supposed to launch Q1 of 2019. Like Bitcoin ETFs and the launch of Bakkt, regulation in the area of crypto moves too slow for some. With 27 million clients this is the ideal way to get more. The future of investment and value storage might become really different as blockchain reaches mainstream adoption levels by 2025.
Timing is everything and before 2020 I expect Fidelity to offer 5 to 7 assets, at the very least. While Bakkt and FDAS might be first-movers among institutional platforms, they won’t be the last. If Fidelity seeks to build a “scalable infrastructure” for digital assets, it’s not the first and it won’t be the last.
Top of the line security though is really a value proposition here. In an era of crypto exchange hacks and fraudulent ICOs what we need is more trust. As part of its security system, Fidelity will hold the cryptocurrencies in cold storage, along with “multi-level physical and cyber controls.
So Bitcoin really is still gaining institutional opt-in, regardless of the price or stage of ICOs, since all of these platforms are basically aiming to make digitally-native assets, such as bitcoin, more accessible to investors — the future of altcoins is digital assets; as the way we think of blockchain adoption keeps maturing and altering its course on so many layers and levels.
