A consortium of financial giants are working to build a new crypto trading platform that could be available by the end of this year or early 2023.
According to a report from Bloomberg, multinational financial services titans Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Virtu Financial, along with hedge fund giant Citadel Securities are working on a new platform to increase public access to cryptocurrencies.
Mayura Hooper, a spokeswoman for Charles Schwab, told Bloomberg,
“[Charles Schwab] has made a minority, passive strategic investment in a new digital asset venture… We know there is significant interest in this cryptocurrency space and we will look to invest in firms and technologies working to offer access with a strong regulatory focus and in a secure environment.”
Fidelity, whose head of global macro Jurrien Timmer recently provided a bullish long-term forecast for Bitcoin (BTC), launched plans for crypto 401k retirement plans this year.
Fidelity Digital Assets’ president Tom Jessop said the firm has a macro vision that looks beyond the crypto market’s recent downturn.
“We’re trying not to focus on the downturns and focus on some of the long-term indicators [such as demand from clients].
We are trying to build infrastructure for the future because we measure success over years and decades, not weeks and months.”
Late last year, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said that regulatory uncertainty was keeping him and the $35,000,000,000 firm out of crypto.
“I would trade it because it would meet the needs of our online brokerage partners who want to have a tier-one firm making prices… We provide a great service every day and every minute of every day and they want us to provide pricing in crypto.
I just don’t want to take on the regulatory risk in this regulatory void that some of my contemporaries are willing to take on.”
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