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JIM ARMSTRONG: Hey, can I transfer my crypto? When is Fidelity Crypto going to offer more coins? Also, can I put crypto in an IRA? This is just a sample of the many, many excellent questions that we get from our viewers during every episode of the Covering Crypto Livestream. So we sat down and talked to ourselves, so it’s probably about time to dedicate a full episode to answering questions that people have about Fidelity Crypto.
Hey, everybody, thanks for joining the Covering Crypto Livestream. I’m Jim Armstrong with Fidelity. Today, we’re going to be looking at real viewer questions and breaking down what Fidelity Crypto offers and talking about some of the new features that you might not be familiar with yet and explaining how customers like you are using them. Now to get those questions answered, we have a pair of excellent guests, both of whom you’ve never met before, but have worked tirelessly behind the scenes on Fidelity Crypto, pretty much since before it was even a thing, when it was just being thought of.
We thought that they would make excellent guests to answer your questions today. I would like to ask each of you to just briefly introduce yourselves and talk a little bit about the work you do with Fidelity Crypto before we get started. And Rashmi, we’ll start with you, if that’s OK.
RASHMI BELUR: Sounds good. First of all, hi. I’m Rashmi Belur. Glad to be here with you, Jim. I lead the crypto experience for trading and payments. My team brings vision to reality. For those who already have crypto accounts and who are familiar with these screens, the screens that you use from crypto account summary to placing a trade, these are the screens my team delivers to you. So I feel fortunate that I lead the talented team who delivers these important experiences to you.
I have been working with Fidelity Crypto for the past four years. And then I bring the perspective to the group today that interacting with a new asset class is usually challenging because it’s new and people are not comfortable interacting with the new asset class. So to bring confidence to users about this new product, we want to make our experiences seamless and also easy to learn these, so that they can use with confidence.
So we constantly collect customer feedback so that we can always make our process better.
JIM: Love it. You’ll get tons of feedback today. I promise you that, Rashmi. And Steve, how about you?
STEVE BALKAM: Thank you, Jim. I’m Steve Balkam, a marketing lead of digital assets, and I lead a team of talented folks that help think about the best ways to introduce new capabilities to existing customers while also sharing the benefits of Fidelity Crypto with Fidelity customers as well as prospective Fidelity customers. The perspective that I bring, as someone who’s been working on the Fidelity Crypto product since before its launch, is that I’ve been able to see teams like Rashmi’s commit to delivering and building out new features that grow Fidelity Crypto while also responding directly to customer feedback to help enhance our product.
JIM: Love it. Kelly Costa is also with us today. She might be familiar to some viewers. She works on the broader crypto education team, but today she’s going to help people watching live interact with the different interactive elements that we have on the broadcast. Hey, Kelly.
KELLY COSTA: Hey, Jim. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on today.
JIM: We have a question that came in during registration from a viewer named Whitney, who just had a really introductory question, maybe getting familiar with crypto and Fidelity Crypto specifically.
Whitney says, why should someone have a Fidelity Crypto account? What can you do with it? Which is a giant question. We could probably talk about that for the better part of an hour. But Rashmi and Steve, I’d love to have you both weigh in on what a Fidelity Crypto account is and what it does. And, Rashmi, we’ll start with you.
RASHMI: Awesome. First thing, I love the interest in learning about the Fidelity Crypto account. It’s a self-managed account. People use the Fidelity Crypto account for trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoin Fidelity Digital Dollar. This Fidelity Crypto account has two account types. One is a taxable account type, and the other one is a retirement account type.
Within the retirement, users can open accounts like Roth, traditional IRA, or rollover IRA.
JIM: And Steve, how about from your perspective? What else would you add to what Fidelity Crypto is?
STEVE: Yeah, so Rashmi talked about what you can do with the account. But for what makes Fidelity Crypto different, first, Fidelity’s commitment to security. So we built our own crypto custodian to handle customers’ assets, and I’ve included security checks throughout our procedures. Our view on the importance of education, so, Jim, you’ve been hosting this show since before we even launched the product.
We also have a monthly decode crypto newsletter that we send out to all of our customers. And if you’re interested, you can check that out at Fidelity.com. We also have Kelly working to bring new content into our learn center, both from our beginner and our advanced audiences, on a regular basis. It’s about consolidation integration, or the ability to manage your stocks, crypto and other investments all through Fidelity or the Fidelity app. It gives you the ability to view your entire investment portfolio all in one place.
And lastly, Fidelity’s overall experience. Fidelity has been in the traditional investing space for over 80 years and been in the crypto space for over 12 years, including launching our own digital custodian, Fidelity Digital Assets.
JIM: Excellent. All right, so we’ve covered a little bit about the “why.” Now let’s spend a moment or two talking about the “who.” We get a ton of practical questions around access, like who can actually open an account and where it’s available, like this question that came in from Jamaine. Is Fidelity Crypto available in Maryland? All right, Rashmi, I’ll hand it over to you, because we do have some updates here about availability in general, particularly when it comes to people asking about states.
RASHMI: Quick response for Jamaine. It’s yes. I want to get into more details about who can open a Fidelity Crypto account. You have to be a US citizen and at least 18 years or older. And if you reside where Fidelity Crypto serves their customers, then you can open a crypto card. Currently, Fidelity Crypto is available in all 50 states. But then I want to mention there is a few exceptions. Fidelity Crypto for IRA is not available in California and Oregon at this time.
JIM: Got it. Once you’re in, another super common question we get is around security, custody, and storage. So Amber, when she registered, sent in this question. Is Fidelity the Bitcoin custodian for retail investors? So we’re going to discuss storage a bit. But just to clarify, Fidelity Digital Assets provides storage and transfers for the digital assets they currently offer on a secure custody platform.
So with that said, I would love to actually have you both talk a little bit about how Fidelity Digital assets, custodies coins here, and the different safety and security features associated with Fidelity Crypto in general. And Steve, maybe you could start this one off.
STEVE: Yeah, thanks, Jim. So I mentioned before that Fidelity Digital Assets launched as an institutional custodian, which means we got started working with larger companies to help keep their crypto safe. And that’s why you might hear us say institutional grade storage. So to answer Amber’s question, yes, Fidelity Digital assets, custody is retail investors’ Bitcoin. So how does Fidelity Digital assets keep your crypto safe?
First, your crypto assets are held offline in cold storage, which means they’re completely disconnected from the internet to reduce exposure to cyber threats in a hardened room that’s tempest-shielded, meaning it’s designed to prevent electronic signals from leaking or being intercepted and radio frequencies blocked. All of our facilities are fully redundant with backups in case any site becomes unavailable.
All sites have 24/7 alarms, security, and remote monitoring. Every security measure is a multi-step process at all of our different locations. And lastly, everything is done in-house, which is not true for all crypto custodians or exchanges. Any crypto that you buy or hold in your Fidelity Crypto account is stored by Fidelity Digital Assets, using the same security processes that I just mentioned.
JIM: Excellent. Rashmi, anything you would add about safety security in general?
RASHMI: I think Steve has summarized really well about what Fidelity does for security and safety of customers’ assets. But I would like to encourage customers to use multifactor authentication to help safeguard their assets. It is used for their login, so we want to make sure users also take care of their assets and logins by using multifactor authentication. And I want users to be diligent about scammers, especially when transferring assets outside the crypto account.
JIM: Yeah, really good. Watch out there. Thanks for that. One more quick question about how Fidelity Crypto accounts work, and then we’ll segue into some more of our newer features. But Stacy is wondering if you can designate beneficiaries in a Fidelity Crypto account. Rashmi?
RASHMI: We cannot assign beneficiaries to taxable accounts at this time. However, for Fidelity Crypto for IRA, its beneficiaries are managed using linked brokerage IRA accounts. Because it’s a common designation, we will be able to carry the beneficiary from their linked brokerage IRA to a crypto IRA account. We continue to listen to our customers’ feedback and hope to improve the experience for taxable accounts.
And I also encourage customers to consult with their legal professionals in case of additional questions on the beneficiaries.
JIM: Yeah, makes sense. All right. Let’s get into the good stuff. Now we’ll talk about what’s new and what could be next. We have questions like the couple that will flash on your screen right now from Ken and from Lewis. Ken is asking, will Fidelity offer trading on coins beyond the four you have now? I think maybe he’s not counting our stablecoins, so I’d call it 5, but we’ll get there in a second.
And then Lewis asks how Fidelity determines which crypto to add to its offering. So, Steve, I think you’ve got a slide that’s going to help us walk through exactly what Fidelity Crypto, as offered by Fidelity Digital Assets, has right now.
STEVE: Awesome. Thanks, Jim. So we recently added Solana to the platform for trading in October of last year. So you can see down at the bottom here in purple. For a little bit on Solana, it was founded in 2020. It’s one of the largest blockchain networks with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its cryptocurrency is SOL, as you see in the parentheses there, and it’s among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Solana is one of the fastest blockchains to use and currently processes transactions faster than both Bitcoin and Ethereum. This efficiency and lower cost structure position it as an attractive platform for blockchain innovations. Jim, the other one that you mentioned there quickly was FIDD. So Fidelity Digital Assets launched its own stablecoin, Fidelity Digital Dollar, which is also known as FIDD, in February of this year.
And I know you’ve had a bunch of great stablecoin experts and guests on the show this year for folks who want to go deeper and learn more about stablecoins. We also have materials on Fidelity.com in our Learning Center, as well. But I would say, from my perspective, launching FIDD was a show of Fidelity’s continued commitment to blockchain and digital asset technology. And as we continue to see stablecoin adoption grow, we will see more and more use cases for our customers to interact with FIDD.
JIM: So let me take a minute and just build on what you were talking about there and talk about crypto ETPs, or exchange traded products, like FSOL, F-S-O-L, the Fidelity Solana Fund, which we recently launched. If you are unfamiliar, crypto ETPs are investment products that trade on stock exchanges, and they really seek to track the price of a cryptocurrency, allowing people to get exposure to a given cryptocurrency without directly holding the coins or tokens themselves.
So FSOL, F-S-O-L, is Fidelity’s exchange traded fund that gives investors exposure to Solana’s price. All right. But looking ahead, Rashmi, again, we get this question all the time. When new coins? When new coins? We get that question. It’s probably one of our number ones. How do you answer that one?
RASHMI: It’s a really tricky question. I would like to provide some criterias for how we actually think about adding new coins. We look at market credibility and then also adoption of the coin. And the biggest thing is value proposition behind that coin. A couple of things we also consider are regulatory comfort behind that coin, and then customer needs, what customers are looking for. So these are a couple of criteria, how we look at new coins before adding them to our platform.
JIM: I want to go back also to that question that Louis asked, because I think there’s another way to maybe look at it is, a customer watching right now, as we know, probably new to crypto, trying to figure out, where do they start? How do they do it if crypto fits into their investing goals? And of course, that is really going to vary a lot from person to person. And the position of the Covering Crypto Livestream is never, ever to give advice.
But if you’re someone who’s in that position trying to look for maybe a way to start investing or figure out even if crypto investing is right for you, I would say do as much research as you possibly can to build up your crypto confidence. By the way, signing up for this livestream, coming to it, and attending it, and engaging with it is an amazing first step in getting those questions answered. Another thing that you might consider doing is checking out the white paper associated with a specific coin or token that you might be interested in.
Rashmi just mentioned Fidelity Digital Assets, really carefully evaluating the potential use cases and value prop or value proposition of a coin or a token. What does it do? What value does it provide? What problem does it solve? You’re likely to find those answers inside of the white paper that preceded the launch of a given coin or token. So you could use your favorite, really, internet search engine and just put in, for example, “Bitcoin white paper,” and then you’ll be taken to, in short order, a lot of different links to read, for example, the Bitcoin white paper.
I also want to point out Fidelity Crypto has a couple of new resources that we’ve developed just over the past couple of months, again, meant to help you build your crypto confidence and get more up to speed, probably before you make that first crypto trade. And actually, to talk more about this more intelligently than I ever could, we’ll bring Kelly back, because she actually led the work to this new piece of education that we’re offering right now. So, Kelly, I’ll bring you in to explain exactly what that is.
KELLY: Awesome. Yeah, so we are super excited. We have a ton of educational resources. And I think this, actually, what I’m about to share ties in well for our first poll with 46% or so of you interested in the fundamentals of crypto. We have a great new experience that we’re excited to share a little bit more about within the Fidelity Investments app. So if you have the app, we have some new bite-sized lessons on crypto basics, which we have a slide here that shows what that looks like.
So you can find these through your Discover tab and then head to “Crypto Collections.” And from there, this slide shows how you can actually get to those lessons. You’re going to click that “Build Crypto Confidence” button. And then you’ll find two different sets of lessons, both on crypto 101 and then Bitcoin basics. And both of those have two levels of lessons that you can take to learn more in an interactive way. So these are a little bit different than an article. You can actually click through and then take some quizzes, which really helps with building that confidence on these crypto basics.
So again, highly recommend if you’re new to crypto, if you want to learn more, and you do have the Fidelity app, if you don’t have the app you can download it, and then head to these lessons and check them out. And when you join us for the next livestream, head to the chat and let us know what you think about them. They are brand new as of the spring of this year. So we’re excited to see what you think and to hear your thoughts.
And then, Jim, I will also just add on top of what we have in the app that’s new, we’re always producing new content elsewhere on Fidelity.com. So if you head to Fidelity.com/Crypto, our favorite link, we say many times here—that’s Fidelity.com/Crypto—and you head to the bottom of that page, you’ll find a couple of different resources for beginners. So again, if you’re in that category, just looking to learn more about the basics, we have a great library of resources there, and even a new crypto glossary with terms.
And there’s a quiz in that piece too, videos, infographics, however you like to learn. We do have that. And then we also have an advanced library with more of the market updates, if that’s more your speed. And finally, we have on-demand versions of this show where this episode will live. And that’s all on Fidelity.com/Crypto. So a lot of different resources that we’re regularly producing and creating for you that are hopefully helpful and good to bookmark.
JIM: Love it. Thank you for that, Kelly. I want to grab another viewer question that came in during registration, specifically about transfers, because that’ll give us an opportunity to talk about another relatively new feature of Fidelity Crypto. Aranka asks, can we transfer crypto to our portfolios? So, Rashmi, I’ll send it back over to you because the answer is, finally, yes, we can.
RASHMI: Yes, that’s right. It’s always good to say—have an answer that is yes. But I want to get into more details about different types of transfers that we have on our platform. I think we may have a slide.
JIM: Yes.
RASHMI: Thank you. So we have two types of transfers. One is to transfer through the blockchain if you have an external wallet. And the other one we have is that you can transfer to a Fidelity customer who already has enabled send and receive functionality. If you are using a blockchain-based transfer, then you will be paying a fee, and then there will be some network congestion that could result in some delays. But on the send-and-receive, which is done within the Fidelity Crypto realm, there’s no fee and the transfers are instantaneous.
So to use the send-and-receive functionality, users need to enroll by creating an ID, and then they can take advantage of this feature.
JIM: Love it. It’s worth noting, too, I should add that there is no transfer of assets feature available for crypto IRAs. That comment leads us to our next batch of questions about retirement accounts and crypto. Got a couple of viewer questions here that we can start off with. Christina and Jenna both asking, essentially, can I buy crypto with my IRA? What type of IRA can invest in cryptocurrencies? Steve, I’ll hand these two questions over to you, and I believe there’s another slide that can help explain those too.
STEVE: Yeah, Jim. And this is another aspect of what makes Fidelity Crypto different. We launched Fidelity Crypto for IRAs in April of 2025. And as a leader in the retirement space, I’m really proud that we did. But in its most basic form, Fidelity Crypto for IRA is a tax-advantaged way to invest directly in crypto. The way that Fidelity handles this actually makes it a little bit easier. So similarly to the taxable Fidelity Crypto account, you will need a brokerage IRA to link to your crypto IRA.
This crypto IRA follows the same rules as the brokerage IRA, in that you can trade as much or as little as you want without paying taxes on those trades. Fidelity offers the ability to open 3 different registration types, traditional, Roth, and rollover. The registration type that you open for your crypto IRA must match your brokerage IRA. If you’re not sure which registration type is right for you, I’d encourage you to check out our retirement section on Fidelity.com where we help guide and learn more about each of the different registration types.
JIM: Thanks, Steve. That actually gives us a really nice segue to talk about taxes in general and about tax lots, another relatively new feature of Fidelity Crypto. Rashmi, let’s start, to make sure everybody’s on the same page. What do we mean when we say tax lots?
RASHMI: A simple way to say what tax lot is, it’s a record. It’s your record of when you purchased assets. It tells you when you purchased, and the amount you paid, and how much quantity that you purchased at the time. So that’s your tax lot. The amount you paid is the total cost basis when it comes to the tax lots. You might have purchased assets in multiple purchases or a single purchase. So if you have purchased in multiple days, then you will have multiple tax lots.
JIM: And so I think it was you, Rashmi, who mentioned a couple of minutes ago, being really responsive to Fidelity Crypto customers asking for product enhancements. The addition of tax lots was one of those things that was really important to a subset of our customers. I know you’ve got a screen grab to help explain why that is. Why is tax lots such an important thing for so many of our customers?
RASHMI: Most of our customers want flexibility. That’s the key reason behind providing this specific lot trading functionality. So people want to manage their taxes, especially when they are selling the assets. By default, we use first in, first out. That means the asset that you purchased first will be disposed of first if you are using a default method. But in case you want to have more flexibility and you want to choose which tax lot you want to dispose, then you go to the trade ticket, and we have a link there to select specific lots.
So when you open that prompt, then you will see all your tax lots, and you will be able to pick and choose based on your tax needs and then submit that order. So this basically provides users the flexibility to manage their taxes.
JIM: I should have said a moment ago that Fidelity, of course, doesn’t provide or offer tax advice. But Steve, at the same time, we do try to go out of our way to help our customers get their tax-related questions answered insofar as we can. So what else would you say about taxes?
STEVE: Yeah, Jim. So for some of the more recent changes to tax forms and crypto taxation, having flexibility in how you manage your positions is really important as an investor. So as Rashmi mentioned, many platforms default to that specific methodology, but not all of them have the ability to trade specific lots. So this should really be a consideration when you’re evaluating where you trade. As you mentioned, Jim, talking with your tax advisor on what depletion methodology is most important for you is really the best way to go.
I would say on taxes overall, we do send out lots of education. It’s covered in the newsletter. And Jim, I know you cover taxes when it comes that time of year as well. So we are putting as much education out there as we can around taxes as well.
JIM: Love it. Another something to talk about. We’ve actually mentioned it a little bit already, but it’s FIDD, F-I-D-D, the Fidelity Digital Dollar offered by Fidelity Digital Assets. We mentioned that we covered a full—used a full episode of The Covering Crypto Livestream back in April to talk about the Fidelity Digital Dollar. So we’ll touch on it briefly here, but I will say if you want a deeper dive on FIDD and what it’s all about, you can head over to Fidelity.com/ CoveringCryptoLivestream. It’s all one word, Fidelity.com/CoveringCryptoLivestream.
The FIDD episode is there, along with all of our other episodes, as Kelly mentioned a moment ago. But let’s grab a real quick question from a viewer named Adam. Yes, Adam says, will there be yield or interest offered with FIDD, the Fidelity Digital Dollar offered by Fidelity Digital Assets? And so a quick answer to that question for Adam and anyone who has it is no. Fidelity Digital Assets is not offering yield on its stablecoin.
But Rashmi, I would love it if you could talk a little bit about FIDD in general and maybe other considerations that people like Adam, or maybe someone watching right now who doesn’t very much about stablecoins in general or fit in specific. What should they know?
RASHMI: FIDD is a US dollar–pegged coin. It’s a stablecoin issued by Fidelity Digital Assets. Because it is US dollar–pegged it provides the stability, like cash, but it is on the blockchain. So the reason for that is to reduce the volatility but then also take advantage of the blockchain. It bridges the gap between the traditional finance and crypto. People use Fidelity Digital Dollar for trading purposes and payments and also cross-border payments in the digital ecosystem.
JIM: Excellent. Steven, Rashmi, I’d love to hear about what’s next in your mind. Where do you see—what do you see happening with Fidelity Crypto going forward? What are you most excited about as you think about the development of this retail product? And Steve, we’ll start with you.
STEVE: Yeah, Jim. So adding Solana to the platform was a big one for me, given that it’s its own blockchain and the number of requests that we had heard from our customers around it. I think the learnings from adding a larger blockchain to our platform will serve us well, as we look to add new cryptocurrencies in the future. I know you’ve mentioned it in the past in other livestreams, but I think some of the regulations that we’re seeing will really help to define the rules of the road and enable us to align and deliver new functionality in a compliant way for our customers.
I also think stablecoin could be a spot we continue to see new growth and ways for our customers to interact with the blockchain. And lastly, for my team specifically, we’ve been working on some new campaigns and ways to help make people aware of Fidelity Crypto, and I’m really excited to bring those to market and to help share Fidelity Crypto’s story with the entire marketplace.
JIM: And Rashmi, how about you? What excites you about Fidelity Crypto?
RASHMI: It’s amazing. We already passed half year, and then we have a lot more to work on. But as a retail product manager, my goal is to build a seamless and intuitive product that helps customers to build their portfolio within the Fidelity ecosystem, so other people can manage—users can manage their crypto alongside their traditional assets in the Fidelity platform. So that’s where I think I come in with the consistency mindset for our customers. As we mature as a business, and also as we get more regulatory clarity, we would love to add more features.
JIM: Yeah, absolutely. That aligns really nicely, Rashmi, with a lot of the customer questions that we get, as well. Speaking of which, let’s move on to some live Q&A. I’ll invite Kelly back in. My sense is there’s a lot of questions, so we’ll take as many as we can.
KELLY: Yeah, lots of great questions. So thank you everyone for asking them. We’ll try to get to as many as we can, as you just said, Jim. So let’s start with this one question we have with some upvotes. How should a retiree be thinking about investing in crypto?
JIM: Oh, Steve or Rashmi, do either of you want to take a swing at that? I can try if you want.
STEVE: I think, Jim, what I would say is when you’re investing in crypto, it’s such a newer and volatile asset class that I really think that you should be prepared to lose whatever you’re willing to invest. So for someone who’s a retiree who’s on a fixed income, I would be very cautious for what you’re investing in because there is an opportunity to lose everything that you invest.
JIM: And we do try to answer these questions to the best of our ability. But of course, we never do advice or anything like that. But again, when you say “retiree” to the person asking the question, what I don’t know on my end that I would need to give you a reasonable answer is, what do you mean? Are you a 52-year-old retiree or are you a 92-year-old retiree? What is your appetite for risk? Are you someone who is very, very comfortable with risky investments, or are you someone who tends to shy away from that?
What does the rest of your portfolio look like? What role could a very risky investment like cryptocurrency play in your existing portfolio? Are you planning to hold for a long time or are you looking to try to capture what you feel like could be short-term gains? I’m asking these questions because these are the types of things that I think a retiree should ask herself or himself. But they’re also the exact questions that anybody getting into crypto should be asking themselves.
How do I feel about risk? How might I feel doing a ton of research on a given coin or token, investing my money in it, and then waking up the next day and seeing it down 50%, 70%? Are you comfortable with that? What does that level of risk do to you as an investor? And when you get to honestly answer questions like that, that’s when you can start to figure out what sort of allocation might be applicable to you. But it’s such a specific individual question that it’s really hard to answer, I think. And with that, Kelly, any others?
KELLY: Yeah, lots more. I think that lends itself well into this next foundational question we have. You mentioned risk a bunch right there, Jim. So we do have a question on, can you talk more about the fundamentals of crypto investing and why is there that risk? What is that in comparison to other assets?
JIM: OK. Steve, Rashmi, either of you want to take a swing at that?
RASHMI: Because crypto is a volatile asset, I think that’s where most of the confusion and clarity need to happen. I suggest customers go through the learn articles that Kelly and Jim have already suggested, because it’s very individual goal–based outcome. So we have to make sure you have all the information before you interact with the crypto assets.
JIM: And Steve, maybe you could talk a little bit about, I guess, how relatively young cryptocurrencies are. Bitcoin’s the oldest one, and it’s only been around since 2009. So young, not-quite-matured assets are volatile.
STEVE: That’s right, Jim. Yeah, and they just don’t have the history to say, this is how it would perform in this cycle. So I know you’ve often talked about Bitcoin in the four-year cycle and how that plays in. But Solana, which we were just talking about, launched in 2020, so it’s only been around for six years. And so I think there is just a lot of that learning curve. There’s a lot of volatility where different market entrants and different news and types of things are coming through. So we’re just learning how it reacts to market news cycles.
JIM: And I think, Kelly, part of the way I would answer that question too, which also, I think, gets to the issue of when will Fidelity offer this new coin or this new token. The barrier to entry to create a new cryptocurrency and launch it to the public is exceptionally low. That means, among other things, it’s very easy to introduce to the world a cryptocurrency that is a flat out scam. So you need to move very carefully, and the introduction of scammy coins like that complicates the larger environment and contributes to volatility throughout the ecosystem.
And as that gets sorted out, it’s part of that learning curve, that asset maturation that Steve was talking about, too, that really, I think, helps explain why Fidelity Digital Assets might move a little bit—for some people’s tastes a little bit slowly in terms of adding new coins, because we want to be really deliberate and thoughtful about what coins are available on our platform. Kelly?
KELLY: Great. So let’s move to a couple of questions around getting started. So we have one from Christie, who’s wondering, what is a realistic dollar amount to get started with? What can I start with?
JIM: Oh, I’ll grab this one too. So Christie, again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but it couldn’t be more true that it has absolutely everything to do with you and your goals, and to Steve’s point from a moment ago, how much, realistically, you’re willing to lose. On the spectrum of volatile investments, risky investments, crypto, depending on the cryptocurrency, effectively buries the needle on the side of risk.
You need to be fully prepared to lose the full value of your investment, and that risk varies depending on the coin or token that you’re talking about, for example, as we’ve mentioned a couple of times on this show. But a reasonable amount for you, Christie, what does the rest of your portfolio look like? If you have seven figures, you might be willing to risk a much bigger amount of money than someone who has a much smaller account balance and just wants to test the waters and figure out what could be reasonable for them.
RASHMI: I can speak from the experience perspective. We allow minimum of $1 for you to trade cryptocurrency. But then, as Jim pointed out, users should be aware of what the risk is they are ready to take.
STEVE: Yeah. And, Jim, that’s kind of where I was going to go, is that there’s no account minimums on either of the accounts, whether it’s a crypto IRA or just a traditional taxable account. So your point about starting small, getting started, you can absolutely do that, open an account, pick a coin that you’d like to invest in, do some research, look at the learn center. Go to, as Kelly mentioned, our progressive learning paths, where you can go in and see the different journeys and learn more.
And then you have a sense of ownership and you have a sense of feeling. No matter how small that dollar position is, I think you could really feel some ownership and learn more by getting started.
JIM: That’s a really great point, too. One more quick thing I’ll add about Fidelity Crypto, just in case that question is out there, what’s Bitcoin at now? It’s at $60,000-plus. You certainly don’t need to have $60,000 to buy a full Bitcoin or $1,200 or $2,000 to buy a full Ethereum token. You can buy, as Rashmi said, as little as $1. You can buy smaller pieces of those investments, maybe, to begin to experience it firsthand. It does not have to be—certainly does not have to be buying a whole coin or a whole token to start the process. Kelly?
KELLY: Yeah, another question, a couple of these that we’ve gotten—and I know we touched on it earlier, but I wanted to bring it up again because lots of questions in the chat—to clarify, if I purchase crypto on another platform, can I switch it to Fidelity?
JIM: Short answer for me is absolutely yes, but I’ll turn it over to Rashmi for a transfer answer.
RASHMI: Yeah, looks like somebody has assets in a different exchange platform, and they want to bring it to consolidate their assets to Fidelity. They can use the functionality that I earlier mentioned, transferring through blockchain. So it looks like they have a external wallet. They can use the transfer functionality on our platform to bring it through the blockchain, and they should be mindful of the correct selection of the blockchain that they are using for the transfer.
And then there is a penny test they should be doing before they transfer the assets. And I also want to mention that there is a fee involved when they are transferring through the blockchain.
STEVE: And Jim, just one thing I would say just to help that person is that in order for you to do this, you will need to have the Fidelity Crypto account open, because what you’re going to do is you’re going to open your Fidelity Crypto account. You’re going to go in and generate a deposit address, and you’re then going to take it to wherever else you have your crypto, and push it to that deposit address. And it will land here in Fidelity Digital Assets in your Fidelity Crypto account.
As Rashmi said, and we can’t stress this enough, is really do that penny test. Make sure everything works. Do a smaller amount to make sure you’re comfortable before you send a larger amount of crypto between two wallets on the blockchain.
JIM: And you largely just explained it there. But could you hit it just again so people understand what a penny test is and why it’s important?
STEVE: Yeah, sure. And we call it a penny test because it’s a penny amount, but it could just be a smaller—it could be $1. It could be anything. But really what you’re doing, you’re saying here’s my deposit into Fidelity Crypto. I’m going to push it from wherever else I have my crypto. I’m going to make sure that I see it go through the blockchain. I’m going to make sure it lands in my account before I send the remainder of my crypto position.
So it’s one way for you to go through, feel comfortable, feel good that everything works, and then go back and send the rest of your crypto position.
JIM: And probably the reason we’re seeing that question a lot is that the ability to transfer both into and out of your Fidelity Crypto account is a relatively new feature. It’s not something that was available at launch. But I will tell you, it was certainly a question that we got a lot during the livestream and then elsewhere. And so to Rashmi and Steve’s point from earlier, we heard that it was a customer ask—a very big customer asked to make that transfer capability happen.
And so Rashmi’s team and others are working behind the scenes here and built that to make it happen. So if you have any question about whether or not the team is responsive to your needs, they absolutely are. Kelly?
KELLY: Yeah, we have a question from Michael back to our conversation earlier. Can you explain again why someone may use a stablecoin versus other types of crypto?
JIM: Oh, sure. Steve, want to take stablecoins in general?
STEVE: Yeah, I think holistically—and Rashmi mentioned this—stablecoin is designed to hold a dollar peg. So if you don’t want to be invested in the crypto market and you don’t want to be subjected to the volatility, where the price can change or move around, and really want to stay right at that $1 mark, that is when you’d switch to a stablecoin. Additionally, using the stablecoin versus just holding cash is you can send it on the blockchain like we were just talking about and transfer between wallets.
So you have the ability to send it on the blockchain instantaneously within a few minutes or whatever it takes for it to get to your other wallet. So it really allows you to have that stable dollar value, but then also the ability to move it on the blockchain.
JIM: And one clarifying there, Steve, you mentioned it. Stablecoins—we often get this question—are not investment vehicles. People will often phrase it as, should I invest in a stablecoin? Is a stablecoin a smart investment? If you were to purchase $100 worth of FIDD, the Fidelity Digital Dollar right now, and went back to that account in a week, or a month, or a year, you should expect it to be worth exactly $100. Again, we mentioned that FIDD doesn’t offer any yield.
Stablecoins are meant to hold their value. So if you’re looking at it in terms of a typical investment that, in theory, should appreciate, given a long enough time horizon, stablecoins are literally not meant to do that. They are meant to be pegged, as Steve said. Well, they can be pegged to any number of things, but the ones we talk about most frequently are stablecoins pegged to the US dollar. So one stablecoin pegged to the US dollar should therefore always be worth 1 US dollar. Kelly?
KELLY: Sure. Another question here, to go back to what we were talking about earlier, to clarify, do you have to be a US citizen to invest in Fidelity Crypto?
JIM: Rashmi, over to you.
RASHMI: Yes. Right now we look for US citizens to open the Fidelity Crypto account. But then, we also look for other customer feedback, to improve our account opening experience.
JIM: Yeah, another area where we definitely get a lot of questions, but that’s the right answer. Anything else, Kelly?
KELLY: Sure. One more I think here that’s a good one to wrap with. We’ve talked about this a bit, but how does Fidelity Crypto distinguish and differentiate itself? How is it different?
JIM: Oh, awesome. Steve, that feels like your wheelhouse.
STEVE: Yeah. So, yeah, thanks, Kelly. So I think I mentioned a little bit before, but one of the big things is the fact that we built our own custodian.
I think when you think about all the other ways that you can invest with Fidelity, the fact that you can see your crypto and your Fidelity Crypto account through our Fidelity.com or the Fidelity app right alongside your investments really allows you to think about crypto not as something that you do on the side but something that you have alongside your broader investment portfolio.
JIM: Excellent. All right. Rashmi, Steve, Kelly, thank you all for taking time out of your day to be with us. Appreciate it.
RASHMI: Thank you.
