It has been reported that in accordance with documents filed today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Fidelity has $5 million already invested in a recently launched Ethereum-index fund.
The asset manager has $4.5 trillion in books. It registered Fidelity Ethereum Fund on Tuesday. However, it stated in its SEC filings that the first sale occurred on September 26.
Fidelity was rumored last month to be considering offering Bitcoin trade to its 34 million retail customers. However, the news did not come directly from Fidelity. At New York’s SALT Forum, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz shared the details.
He said that a bird had told him, and that a little bird was whispering to me that Fidelity would soon shift its retail customers to crypto. “I hope that bird is correct.”
Fidelity also has been working on a crypto-exchange, EDX Marketplaces. Fidelity teamed up with Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities to create a consortium. The newly launched exchange is expected to “facilitate an efficient, secure, and cost-effective process of trading digital assets”, a spokesperson for Fidelity told decrypt via email last month.
Fidelity’s new Ethereum Index Fund joins a crowded field of other notable Ethereum funds.
Bitwise, an asset manager with $1 billion in assets, stated in a SEC filing last September that its Ethereum Fund had $25,000,000 worth of assets under management. Bitwise’s Ethereum fund was launched in 2018 by the San Francisco-based company.
Fidelity’s index funds and Bitwise’s exchange-traded funds are different. The difference is in how they’re traded. Fidelity’s latest offering of index funds can only be bought after the markets close and at fixed rates.
Index funds have a lower minimum investment than other funds. However, the minimums of $50,000 for Fidelity and Bitwise, and $25,000 at ETHE, Bitwise, are too high to be affordable for retail investors. This is especially true since all these Ethereum funds are only available to accredited investors.
