Fidelity says 1/3rd of Large Institutions have exposure to Bitcoin and Crypto
We thought institutions were here, now we have confirmation that they are
The good news about Fidelity getting involved in the crypto space is that we have direct access to information on their institutional clients.
In a round about way that is.
They tend to put out reports on the regular about what their clients are doing.
The latest was pretty interesting as it relates to bitcoin and cryptocurrency...
Fidelity announced that more than 1/3rd of their large institutional clients have exposure to bitcoin or other crypto assets.
More from the report can be seen here btw:
The big takeaway...
To me this was the meat of the report:
"Across the U.S. and Europe, 36% of the survey’s 774 respondents said they own cryptocurrencies or derivatives. In the U.S., 27% of institutions -- including pension funds, family offices, investment advisers and digital and traditional hedge funds -- said they own digital assets, up from 22% about a year ago, when Fidelity surveyed 441 institutions just in the U.S. In Europe, 45% of respondents are invested in digital assets."
"Over a quarter of the respondent hold Bitcoin, while 11% hold Ether, the survey found."
This makes a lot of sense from a European perspective as they have been dealing with negative interest rates for some time now, and holding bitcoin (an asset with no yield) doesn't hurt as much it does in more of a "normal" interest rate environment.
By the way, the really interesting part of this was that of those institutions owning crypto, roughly 60% of them are said to own it via the spot markets while the other 40% have exposure via derivatives.
Which is exactly the opposite of how I figured it would be divided.
I fully expected most institutions to go the regulated derivatives rout in order to gain exposure to bitcoin and the like.
Something to keep in mind...
One thing to be aware of is that this survey was completed at the beginning of March, which was mostly before the big dip in crypto prices.
If the survey was done again right now, the results may be slightly different.
Though, my guess is that the breakdown would actually be even more heavily weighted towards crypto than it was previously.
Mostly because we have increased the money supply significantly since the time this survey was done, and that was/is the main selling point of owning bitcoin at this point.
Either way, it's good to see institutions coming on board.
I expect that trend will continue as we march forward.
Stay informed my friends.
-Doc