Fidelity is working towards a retail-oriented crypto offering. Recent job postings offer clues as to what retail services might look like. This week, there was much talk about Fidelity’s plans for expanding its crypto footprint to a wider customer base that is retail-oriented.
Fidelity’s job advertisements from recent months offer clues to the retail crypto ambitions of the investment company, including the roles that could play a role in the development and maintenance of crypto wallet services.
Fidelity’s career portal lists at least half a dozen positions with a focus on wallets.
Fidelity full service crypto platform
One ad for a Senior Java Engineer at Wallet Blockchain highlights that Fidelity Digital Assets (a Fidelity Investments Company) is creating a full-service platform for storing and trading digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
In June, the FDA posted an ad that posited the position of operating on a wallet team within its larger organization.
The Wallet Blockchain Foundations Team within Fidelity Digital Assets is responsible for backend services and APIs to support digital asset transactions on networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This team will also be leading tokenization efforts.
Others listed roles focus on crypto wallet functionality, as well as other responsibilities. The description of a Principal Software Engineer/Developer position posted this month states that the role requires “performing crypto wallet optimizing — lending and spot rate and social market analysis — in an Amazon Web Services Cloud environment using Java, Oracle Spring Boot and Docker.”
A Principal Java Engineer is needed for the Wallet Blockchain Foundations team. This role requires “1+ years experience in developing and maintaining smart contract using Solidity”. Solidity is an Ethereum-specific coding language.
Retail job post revealed on linkedin
Fidelity specifically mentioned a retail clientele in a job posting for a Squad leader, Crypto Data Analytics role. This post was previously posted on LinkedIn.
The post stated that “Your team will deliver to market, revenue-generating decision support tools to assist in the trade decisions for Fidelity’s retail crypto clients.” The metadata is still visible in , a Google search.
According to sources familiar with the process, the plans are retail-focused and have been in development for some time. These descriptions seem to match the details reported by the Wall Street Journal. Fidelity’s crypto efforts are geared towards institutional investors to date.
A representative of the firm said to The Block, “While we don’t have anything new to announce, expanding our offerings in order to allow wider access to digital assets is a focus area.
Mike Novogratz, chief executive of Galaxy Digital stirred the rumor mill during Monday’s conference appearance. He said: “A little bird informed me Fidelity were going to shift retail customers towards crypto soon.”
