According to TechCrunch, Fidelity Investment’s CEO Abigail Johnson has just announced that the company will be making its first foray into mining for cryptocurrency.
This announcement first came during a talk Johnson held during Consensus, a New York-based bitcoin conference. She discussed how the company, currently valued at $2.3 trillion in terms of assets, had already invested in bitcoin and businesses related to it, already investigating the applications of blockchain technologies with several universities.
According to the publication Quartz, Fidelity has already begun a small mining operation within the company’s asset manager. Johnson confirms that it’s already seeing returns.
Fidelity is reported to have purchased their mining equipment from the company 21 Inc. Johnson is so supportive of the venture that she has personally mined currency herself, building up around 200,000 satoshis (a subdivision of the bitcoin valued at 0.00000001 BTC).
Additionally, Fidelity has updated its website to display cryptocurrency balances for a customer’s Coinbase account, a cryptocurrency trading and storage service provider. All of this makes the company one of the largest financial institutions to publicly back the digital money industry, putting it in direct opposition to many others including giants like J.P. Morgan (who, rather hypocritically, were quietly investing in cryptocurrency despite its CEO claiming to have no interest in it).
Out of all cryptocurrencies currently in circulation, bitcoin remains the largest and most valuable in the world. After a recent run of record breaking highs, a single bitcoin is currently valued at over 4,200 USD per unit. Despite many people’s apprehension or dismissal, bitcoin has only continued to grow since its inception. Even big names like Morgan Stanley’s CEO, James Gorman, have come to support bitcoin, calling it and other cryptocurrencies “more than just a fad”.
Time will tell whether Fidenlity’s investment into bitcoin will pay off, though trends in the market seem to indicate as such.
Dil Bole Oberoi
