Fidelity becomes latest firm to re-up bid for spot bitcoin ETF

Fidelity has re-entered the field of spot bitcoin ETF hopefuls. 

The financial services giant, which has about $11 trillion in assets under administration, filed on Thursday. The ETF was filed under the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust name.

According to the filing, Fidelity Digital Assets Services will “be responsible for custody of the Trust’s bitcoin.”

Fidelity’s filing comes after BlackRock — an asset manager with roughly $9 trillion assets under management — revealed plans to launch a spot bitcoin ETF earlier this month. 

Read more: Is BlackRock’s clout enough to get its bitcoin ETF past the SEC?

That move by BlackRock spurred other fund firms that had previously tried to launch such a fund — including Bitwise, WisdomTree, Invesco, Valkyrie and VanEck — to re-up their own efforts. 

Ark Invest and 21Shares, which had re-filed for their spot bitcoin ETF in April, amended its proposal on Wednesday to include a surveillance-sharing agreement with an unnamed bitcoin spot trading platform.

Fidelity’s latest move does not come as a surprise, as many had predicted the firm would rejoin the spot bitcoin ETF launch effort after BlackRock got the industry’s attention.  

But unlike BlackRock, Fidelity has tried to launch a spot bitcoin ETF before. 

The firm filed in 2021 for the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, a proposed ETF ultimately blocked by the SEC in January 2022. That denial came nearly two months after Fidelity successfully launched a spot bitcoin ETF in Canada.  

More broadly, Fidelity has been involved in the crypto space for years. 

It launched Fidelity Digital Assets in 2018 to offer crypto custody and trade execution services to institutional investors, such as hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries.

The company launched its Crypto Industry and Digital Payments ETF (FDIG) and the Fidelity Metaverse ETF (FMET) in April 2022.

This is a developing story.

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