It seems that every ounce of innovation in terms of accepting crypto and decentralization must first pass from Canada and then from there towards the United States. Canada was the first country to ever approve a Bitcoin futures ETF and accept cryptocurrencies in a major capacity before the United States ever thought of doing so. It was years after the approval of the first Bitcoin futures ETF in Canada that the United States started to take this thing seriously. Now there are Bitcoin futures ETF approved and trading in the United States as well, but once again, Canada hit the mark before the US in another capacity.
Fidelity Investments, the most elementary financial management service, has been approved to become the first institutional bitcoin custodian for Canada. The firm got approval from Canadian regulators, and it will be working as a trading platform specifically tending to the needs of institutional investors regarding Bitcoin and various other cryptocurrencies. It has become the first Bitcoin custodian for Canada, with a chance of many others joining in afterward. This way, more and more Canadian institutions would be able to get feasible exposure to the crypto market and especially Bitcoin.
New Opportunities for Institutional Investors
This will open multiple opportunities for Bitcoin investment for Canadians, and institutions like pension funds, mutual funds, portfolio managers, and exchange-traded funds could be able to benefit from this transition. It was the investment industry regulatory organization of Canada that previously approved Fidelity Canada to launch a Bitcoin trading and custody management platform that specifically caters to the needs of institutional investors and other common people, providing them every opportunity they can get with the crypto market.
The overall demand for investing in digital assets is on the rise, and if this whole transition becomes successful and many companies and people are considering investing through Fidelity, then other digital assets such as smart contracts and non-fungible tokens would also be added into the mix. With this deal, Fidelity will be providing services to more than 100 different investment companies within the country. The new platform will be ready and available for public fuse soon; there is no word of a similar project going off in the United States at the moment.