Fidelity Investments, a large American asset management firm, will allow its clients to invest part of the funds from retirement accounts in bitcoin.
According to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, these are 401(k) retirement accounts – these are corporate savings retirement accounts. The funds are not taxed and are automatically transferred by the employer to the funds chosen by the employee.
Fidelity will provide an opportunity to invest up to 20% of funds from such accounts in the first cryptocurrency. It is planned that customers will need to open a separate account to invest in bitcoin, but at first investors will be able to try the new feature without it.
Research firm Cerulli Associates estimates that about a third of the funds managed by Fidelity Investments are kept in retirement accounts. The company is going to take a commission on funds invested in bitcoin from retirement accounts. It is expected that it will be from 0.75% to 0.9%.
Publications report that MicroStrategy has already expressed a desire to participate in the new program. This is not surprising, since it is MicroStrategy that has the largest reserves of bitcoins among the companies traded on the exchange.
Earlier, Fidelity Investments analysts stated that Bitcoin is a unique asset and should be considered separately from altcoins, since “no other cryptocurrency can compare with it.”
