Fidelity Concludes That A Third Of Global Institutions Invest In Crypto

A Fidelity survey that covered 774 institutional investors has come to an exciting conclusion. According to the survey, more than a third of the institutional investment firms worldwide have started to invest in digital assets or its derivatives.

Bitcoin Proving More Attractive

The actual numbers show that 36% of institutions globally own crypto, with Fidelity finding that only 27% of the US institutions in particular, of the 441 surveyed, are exposed to crypto. While that’s up from last year’s numbers, the multinational financial services firm recorded 22% back then; it’s a far cry from European institutions, who have close to half of the institutions going long on virtual assets.

Bitcoin stands, as usual, as the most popular form of crypto investment out there. More than a quarter of the respondents have some sort of holding within BTC, with 11% of the firms stating they own Ether holdings as well.

Looking Before Things Went Wrong

Greenwich Associates was the firm that Fidelity had commissioned to conduct this survey, doing so from November last year to early March this year. Thus, this data reflects the crypto positions of various firms just before the massive “Black Thursday” market crash, which saw the entire crypto industry halve itself in value, or more.

It should be noted that only 60% of the institutions that exposed themselves to crypto, did so through purchasing it on the spot markets. The remainder 40% opted to use the derivatives market, instead.

A Slow Acceptance Of Crypto

While there’s still a large number of institutions that have yet to integrate crypto into their exposure, it should be noted that six out of ten respondents are convinced that digital assets have a  place within their respective portfolios. Only a measly 20% of all participants in this survey expressed the intent of completely abstaining from the crypto asset class due to lack of appeal.

Tom Jessop of Fidelity gave a statement about the matter at large. He explained that the results had confirmed a trend that the company had seen in the market. This trend is the higher interest and acceptance of cryptocurrencies as a new form of an investable asset class.

The survey justifies this, as 91% of the respondents had indicated that they expect to have crypto within their portfolio, even as little as 0.5%, within the next five years, or so

The most high-profile cases of institutional investors moving to crypto in recent times, is none other than Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge fund founder, moving into crypto. He had included a single-digit percentage of his portfolio to be in crypto. Jones was quick to point out that this wasn’t him advocating for crypto, merely acknowledging that profits can be made from it.