How to Open a Fidelity Crypto^® Account

JIM ARMSTRONG: Over the past few months, we’ve gotten a lot of questions from livestream viewers, like the trio that you see on your screen right now from Diane, Ethel, and Bradley. Folks asking questions like, hey, does Fidelity even offer crypto? How do I get started? What’s a simple, straightforward way to learn the process? So that’s exactly what this livestream is meant to do.

Before we do that, though, I do want to point out that, today, we’re talking only about the process of buying and trading spot crypto. If you don’t what that means, it’s just another way to say buying actual coins directly. So this would be the process by which you would have direct ownership of ethereum, for example, or bitcoin or litecoin.

That’s different from buying or trading a fund. So today, we’re not talking about ETFs, exchange-traded funds, or ETPs, exchange-traded products, even though those are other ways to get invested in crypto. Again, today, we’re talking just about spot cryptocurrencies.

Now, at Fidelity to buy spot crypto, you need a Fidelity Crypto account. And again, that’s what we’re going to be walking you through today. So Dan, before we get into the nitty-gritty here, I was hoping you could just give a real high-level sense of what Fidelity Crypto is? And then also, if you could, answer this question that came in from Amy during registration. She’s curious about whether or not she has to be a US citizen to have a Fidelity Crypto account.

DAN CHODOS: Yeah, happy to, Jim. So like you were mentioning, a Fidelity Crypto account allows you to buy, sell, and transfer cryptocurrencies—think bitcoin, ethereum, and some others—in an account that you can access either from Fidelity.com or, like you’ll see today, on the Fidelity Investments® app. It’s all in one place that you track your traditional accounts, as well. And to answer Amy’s question, yes, you do need to be a US citizen. And you need to be at least 18 years of age.

JIM: Got it. All right, so in a second, Dan is going to share his screen now and walk us through phase I of the process, which is how to open an account. I will note that Dan is going to be doing that on a test account on a mobile device. But by and large, it’s a very, very similar process if you choose to open an account on the web. Dan, I’ll hand it over to you.

DAN: Yeah, thanks, Jim. And I’ll echo the sentiments. We try to keep parity generally across the experiences. So you should experience largely, whether you’re on iOS, Android, or web, a very similar experience with some slight differences along the way. But would recommend here, whenever you’re going to a mobile app, just make sure that you have the latest app, whether you go to the Apple® App Store® or to the AndroidTM Google PlayTM store. Grab the latest version. That’s what we’ll be demoing here today.

So I’m going to talk a bit about our account opening process here and demo the experience for you. First, to call out, you do need two accounts for the Fidelity Crypto experience. You need a funding account. That’s a Fidelity brokerage account.

And then you need the Fidelity Crypto account. And that’s the account where you’re going to buy, sell, trade, transfer the cryptocurrencies. You need that because Fidelity Crypto itself does not offer direct inbound funding from fiat currencies.

So we create that connection where you’re going to fund the brokerage account, and then you’re going to transfer those funds over to the crypto account to make the transactions. I’ll gladly walk you through all those stages today. But think of it as a bank to brokerage, brokerage to crypto part.

We will open both the brokerage and the crypto account together if you do not have a brokerage account. If you already have a brokerage account, though, you can just select that as your linked brokerage account and your funding account for your crypto. I will show you here the process.

And it’ll reference that we’re going to open both at the same time. But again, it’s whatever you already have. Or if you’re a brand-new customer, please join us and have both.

So here I am. I’m on what’s known as the Account Summary page. Here, you can see, your current accounts. As Jim was mentioning, this is a test account. So we have it funded with some funds that we’re going to use later.

And here, you see some of the accounts you have and a bright green button on the bottom that says Open or Link an Account. So that’s going to take you into the platform for account opening. So I’m going to come here. And I’m going to choose to open a new account.

A couple options—you can open general investing accounts, link your brokerage accounts, where you look to invest stocks, ETFs, funds. You can have retirement accounts or today, as we talked about, the crypto account. Click Crypto and choose Next.

And then from Crypto, there are a few options. So you do see on top, the General Investing. That is where you can directly buy and sell that crypto. But we also offer different products. You see here the Fidelity Crypto for IRAs.

I would invite you to visit Crypto Learn, where you can learn more or our Help section, both on those hyperlinks below, which will give you more details. For today’s demo, we are going to do the General Investing. I’m going to click that and get started.

So here’s some information. We want you to know what you’re going to be getting involved with as you’re opening a crypto account. This does allow you to trade crypto and stocks all in one app.

You can start trading with as little as $1. And we do take a very educational-focused approach. We want you to build your crypto knowledge and do it at your own pace as you’re getting involved in learning the space. You’ll see below some disclosures. You’ll see that throughout our entire experience.

I would recommend that you take your time. You read through the disclosures. You understand the risks and opportunities within the overall experience. And that will show all throughout this entire experience.

I’m going to go ahead and click this Let’s Go button. So as we mentioned, Fidelity Crypto does use a brokerage as a funding source. So if you have that brokerage, like we said, you can link to it already. If not, then you can go ahead and open both at the same time—a little info icon here that helps explain some of that.

And as I mentioned, we don’t offer the direct bank-to-crypto transfers. So you’ll need that brokerage account.

I’m going to go ahead and click Next. Is this account just for you, or will you share it? So this is asking you, is it going to be an individual account, where you’re the only owner or if it’s a joint account where you’re going to share it. If you do choose joint, it’s going to ask if you want a joint rights of survivorship account or joint tenants in common. Either one are applicable, and it depends on preference there.

I’m just going to go back, though, and choose Just for Me. And right now, it’s looking through, and it pulled up information about me. So I’m already an existing customer.

If I was not an existing customer, we’re going to grab some general information about you, name, address, elements of your employment, and make sure that we have all of that loaded up for the account opening. Because we have that, you can see, I’m able to access here and review the personal information. I can also see different elements about account opening and things that, if I want to read those agreements, they’re all available to me.

I don’t have anything to change in this case. So I’m just going to go ahead and scroll down and click Open My Accounts. Wonderful. So our accounts are now open. We have a new brokerage account, and we have a new crypto account.

And so that brokerage account is going to be our funding account. And our crypto account is going to be where we do our trading, transferring, and other activities. Jim?

JIM: Excellent. Thank you for that. I have a question from a viewer named Christy, who wants to know what a realistic dollar amount is to get started. So I will answer that with a nonanswer, unfortunately. Because Christy, it really depends on what is realistic to you as someone perhaps getting started.

So for you, that answer might be $10. For you, that answer might be $1,000. It really is just up to you and your own specific needs and concerns, as long as you’re aware of all the risks involved, as well. I will say that, Fidelity Crypto, as offered by Fidelity Digital Assets®, allows you to get started with as little as $1. So that’s the lowest you could do—or again, just as long as it matches your particular risk tolerance and your need.

But Dan, I want to go back to what you said a moment ago about getting funding into that brokerage account in the first place. Because as you mentioned, it’s from the brokerage account that money moves into the Fidelity Crypto account. So walk us through, if you could, just how money might get into that brokerage account in the first place.

DAN: Definitely. And like you said, Jim, you need to fund your brokerage account. You can do that through a couple different paths. So here I am back on our Account Summary page.

As I’m scrolling down, if you see there’s a green circle with the dollar sign, that is our Transact widget. And that’s how we get into Transfer. So this is where you can go ahead and set up any bank or make a transfer from your brokerage to your crypto. So let’s talk about setting up a bank first.

If I scroll down, and I have not linked any bank, you’ll see this opportunity to Link a Bank or Recipient. So I’m going to click that.

And this gives us the opportunity to fund our brokerage through a couple different ways. An EFT—so that’s where you send money from a linked bank account into your own, typically available within one to three days. You can do a bank wire. Sometimes there is a fee that’s associated with that. And also, you can transfer directly from somebody else’s Fidelity account.

For the purposes today, we’re going to talk about an electronic funds transfer, an EFT. So I’m going to click that. And you can choose, are you EFTing money to yourself, or are you sending money somewhere else? I’m going to go ahead and click Myself.

And here’s what’s going to happen. So you’re going to provide information. You provide your bank’s, routing and account numbers. In some cases, you may need to provide an online banking username or a password if you’re going through that experience.

For those customers that are looking for their account and routing numbers, these are available on checks. So if you go to the check from the institution where you’re funding from, you should be able to find it there. Otherwise, typically, you can call the bank. Or you can just log in to your digital experience. And it’s typically available on the account page.

I’m going to go ahead and click Continue. So here, I have those couple options. I have EFT or Bank Wire. As mentioned, we are going to do an EFT.

So Myself—it is not a business account. It is a personal account. And then I have a couple different options here. So I can either securely log in to the bank utilizing the Mastercard Data Connect that we have here. Or I can enter the bank information on my own.

Entering that bank information is those account and routing numbers. For our purposes today, we’re going to go ahead and do that. I’m going to choose which account I want to link this to. So we’re going to choose this account.

I’m going to choose to Link a New Bank and confirm that I am the owner. It is coming from either a checking or brokerage account, from a savings account or a business. We’ll choose Checking.

And in this case, this is where you’re going to fill out the information about the routing number, the account number, and then we’re just going to confirm that account number, as well. As mentioned, you can grab this information from the account page at your bank or on a check.

I’m just going to close out from that experience and show you another way that you might be able to fund your crypto account, as well. So once that bank is linked, it would be in this From. So I’m going to go ahead. Just again, I’m back in this Transfer widget. And actually, we’ll just go back into it again.

So remember, you can grab it from this green circle on the bottom, and go to this Transfer. And so in From, as long as I’ve linked that bank, you’re going to see it as one of the funding options here. But if I already have an existing account and that account is already funded as well, I can choose that account.

And here, you’ll see this individual account does have a balance of $74.71 that’s available for Fidelity Crypto. So I’m going to choose that. I’m going to put it into my Fidelity Crypto account. You’ll see there that I already have a balance as well of $72.92.

But let’s go ahead and add to that. So we’re going to add $10. Click Review. This is providing the information that we are going from the individual to the Fidelity Crypto account on today. And then just a reminder to our customers here that the cash held in a Fidelity Crypto account does not earn interest.

I’ll go ahead and click Submit. And the funds are over. And so now we’ve fully funded our Fidelity Crypto account. Jim?

JIM: Excellent, Dan. Thank you for that. And for folks watching, if, by chance, you still have some questions about opening and funding an account or about crypto in general, we would strongly suggest you check out a website called Fidelity.com/Crypto. It is a great starting place, again, not just to talk about and review how to open an account and how to transact and trade, but it also provides a lot of educational links, as well, to help you get more educated in general about cryptocurrencies and perhaps learn which one might be right for you. So again, that’s Fidelity.com/Crypto.