Fidelity Investments President, Abigail Johnson alongside the Head of Strategy and Planning, Peter Jubber, filed paperwork this week with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a new fund that exclusively invests in Bitcoin.
According to a Forbes report on the development, the Wise Origin Bitcoin Index Fund I, LP, is the previously unknown fund incorporated this year and is managed in the Fidelity Investment headquarters, where the company has some $8.3 trillion in assets under management.
Early documentation does not provide so much information about the Wise Origin Index Fund I. It does disclose that no investor has invested in it. The fund is also said to have a minimum investment of $100,000, a condition that suggests it will only cater to institutions and accredited investors.
The relationship between Wise Origin Funds and Fidelity Digital Assets remains unclear, even though the documents show that Fidelity Brokerage Services, which is located in Smithfield, Rhode Island, will serve as the custodian of the funds.
A trademark application for the name Wise Origin Funds was filed by Fidelity intellectual property Vice President, Thomas Barry, and still reviewed by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office.
To convince the SEC about the feasibility of a Bitcoin fund, Fidelity Investments published the result of a survey of close to 800 institutional investors from the U.S and Europe. The result showed that 36% of the companies are already investing in digital assets, while 60% had plans to invest in digital assets.
Fidelity Leads Institutional Adoption of Bitcoin
The latest development at Fidelity Investments continues the company foray into Bitcoin, an asset class that has remained controversial for some institutional investors.
Fidelity Investments officially launched a cryptocurrency-investment focused subsidiary Fidelity Digital Assets in 2018, before revealing in late 2019, intentions to expand its brokerage services to Europe.
Also, in the same year, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) granted Fidelity a BitLicence, allowing the company to run various crypto-related businesses.
