Fidelity lets clients view their bitcoin balance on its site
So long as they store their cryptocurrencies on Coinbase.
Fidelity Investments announced in May that it would soon let its clients view their bitcoin and other cryptocurrency balances on its website, provided it was stored on Coinbase. Embracing unregulated cryptocoins was seen as a bold move by the brokerage company, and certainly uncommon among financial institutions. Today, Fidelity made good on its promise: Once users authorize the site to access their data from Coinbase, they can check their bitcoin savings.
Fidelity held a trial with its own employees first before launching this initiative. The company's CEO Abigail Johnson has repeatedly affirmed her belief in cryptocurrencies, and previously claimed that even the Fidelity cafeteria accepts bitcoins. But it's also an attempt to glean more info on how clients keep cryptocurrencies behave.
"This is an experiment in the spirit of learning what these crypto assets are like and how our customers may want to interact with them," Hadley Stern, senior vice president and managing director at Fidelity Labs, told Reuters in an interview.
