A simple, though compelling paradigm guides Fidelity Investments, the
That's the formula Fidelity's Cynthia Lo Bessette, head of digital asset management, described as the road map for creating trust in a new asset and asset class represented by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether and Solana. Starting from such a large customer base has allowed Fidelity to rank as the second-most popular in the highly competitive market for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, behind only industry leader BlackRock,
An important part of this recipe is Fidelity's willingness to build its own underlying crypto-market infrastructure, Bessette said.
"Our focus is not just on building the right product, but having the ability to build the infrastructure we think gives us that deeper understanding of the operating platform," Bessette said. It's a fitting philosophy from a firm headed by Abigail Johnson, who famously began mining bitcoin at Fidelity's offices in 2014.
"The best way to learn in this ecosystem is to build, and the more that we build, the more that we can see the Lego bricks and how they connect," Bessette said.
The first part of the paradigm—hold—has been in place with Fidelity's crypto ETFs
Her division's rapid client adoption of crypto ETFs contributed to Fidelity hitting a record year in 2025, with total company revenue jumping 15% to $37.7 billion.
A second leg to the use category is the tokenized money-market fund Fidelity created in 2025, which is native to the ethereum blockchain and earns interest by investing in U.S. Treasury bonds. The fund works as a token held by investors in a digital wallet that can then be used for other income-generating purposes on ethereum.
The firm is working toward enabling token holders to use the digital money-market fund as collateral for a loan, Bessette said. That's meant to allow access to capital on-chain that can be used as margin or collateral for other on-chain investments.
The build category is the final step Fidelity will take in its digital-asset paradigm, which is meant to give investors more customization than ever before, she said.
"You can program all varieties of compliance requirements as well, and so you now have a lot of flexibility to create hyper-personalized experiences across multiple asset types," Bessette said. That creates a "range of investment instruments that can then be incorporated into that same programmable portfolio," she said. "We're increasingly looking at opportunities to tokenize non-traditional assets that can then be incorporated into a portfolio."
While blockchain technology and the ability to create digital representation of traditional financial assets may seem novel, it's an extension of what investment firms like Fidelity have been doing for decades, Bessette said.
"In one case you can look at this ecosystem as a new investable asset class, and then in the other respect you can look at this technology as creating new opportunities for capital allocation and capital access, which goes to the very heart of what we do as asset managers," she said. "So, from that perspective, there's such a diversity of what this technology represents."
