How to Open a Fidelity Crypto^® Account

JIM ARMSTRONG: Hey there. Welcome to the Covering Crypto Livestream. I’m Jim Armstrong with Fidelity. First, I want to say thank you to the many, many viewers who sent in a lot of questions and comments, asking for some details about how to open a Fidelity Crypto® account. Also, got a lot of questions about how to fund that account, how to buy and sell crypto inside of that account, and of course, how to transfer cryptocurrencies into and out of a Fidelity Crypto account.

We’ve taken those questions, grabbed a whole bunch of them, and built an entire livestream around answering those questions, showing you the process from end to end. And that’s what we’ll get done today. I do want to point out, though, before we get started, today’s livestream is only going to cover buying spot crypto, buying cryptocurrencies directly such that you would own them outright.

We’re not going to be talking about buying any crypto funds today. So no ETPs, no ETFs. We’re not talking about buying stock in companies that do business in the crypto space. The reason for that is, you can hold any of those assets essentially in account types that you’re probably already pretty familiar with.

ETPs, ETFs, crypto equities, those can be held in many different account types. They can be held in IRAs or retirement accounts, in brokerage accounts, in trusts. The list goes on and on. But, when it comes to actual spot crypto here at Fidelity, you need a Fidelity Crypto account to get that done. And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

And to get that done, I am thrilled to be joined by Dan Chodos from Fidelity Digital Assets® team. Hey, Dan.

DAN CHODOS: Hey, Jim. Happy to be here today.

JIM: Again, thanks for making time for us. Before we get started, it would be great, I think, if you could just spend 30 seconds or so telling the folks watching who you are and what you do here.

DAN: Yeah. And thanks again for having me. So I’m a team lead in our Fidelity Crypto products. I lead a team that’s responsible for building out some of our digital products and experiences. And really excited to be here because I get the privilege to walk through a demo and highlight some of the core functionality that we’ve built, and give a closer look into how some of our customers are interacting with the experience, and provide some guidance to others on how to use it for themselves.

JIM: Love it. OK, thanks, Dan. In terms of an agenda, Dan just laid it out for us there more or less. We’re going to start off with some high-level basics about what you need in terms of eligibility requirements to get started. And then Dan will share his screen and walk you through, on both web and mobile, how to open a Fidelity Crypto account, how to get money into that account, how to fund it. And then we’ll talk about doing trades, buying and selling cryptocurrencies inside of that account.

And then finally, we will wrap things up with talking about how to transfer deposits and withdrawals into and out of Fidelity Crypto account.

All right, let’s dive in again with how to open an account. And first, we’ve got those eligibility requirements that we need to get out of the way. So in order to open a Fidelity Crypto account, you need to be a United States citizen, you need to be at least 18 years old, and you need to live in a state where Fidelity Digital Assets can do business.

So at the moment, that’s not all 50 states, but we’re growing that list as quickly as we can. In order to figure out if your state is on that list, you should head over to Fidelity.com/Crypto. By the way, that’s a great resource. You’ll hear us talk about it a lot today. It’s going to explain how to do business with Fidelity Crypto, how to open and fund and trade like Dan’s going to talk about. It’s also got some really great basic and advanced education for people looking for that. And, if you scroll down a little bit, there’s an FAQs, a Frequently Asked Questions section of that page. And one of the very first ones that you’ll see there is, essentially, “Is my state eligible for Fidelity Crypto?” That link is going to have the most up-to-date information about what states are eligible. So definitely check there if you’re interested in finding out more.

Now we can get started with a clarifying question that came in from Erika when she registered for the livestream. She wrote in, and she asks, “Is there a difference between opening a separate crypto account and buying cryptocurrency through my existing [Fidelity] account?”

And I kind of answered that—I stole some of your thunder there, Dan—because, in fact, you can’t buy spot crypto in a brokerage account. You need a Fidelity Crypto account. And Dan, you might actually need both accounts.

DAN: Yeah, that’s exactly right. So this is something that we’re going to show in just a few minutes in the account opening experience, but you do need two accounts. So you’ll need a Fidelity brokerage account, which is something that you may already have if you’re buying or selling stocks, equities, bonds, other instruments through the Fidelity platform, and that’s offered by the Fidelity Brokerage Services.

Once you have that brokerage account, you’ll need to open a Fidelity Crypto account, which is provided by Fidelity Digital Assets. So to be specific and answer Erika’s question, that’s actually where you will access crypto and you need to have both accounts. But before you dive in, the best place to start is probably just to check to see if you have that Fidelity brokerage account.

JIM: And on behalf of the people who are watching this live right now, Dan, why, why do I need two accounts?

DAN: Yeah, it’s a great question. You need both because Fidelity Crypto does not offer direct transfers from your outside bank into your Fidelity Crypto account. So at a very high level, here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to fund your brokerage account by transferring money from your external bank to your brokerage account. And then you’re going to move that money over from your brokerage account to your crypto account. So we think of it as a two-step process— bank to brokerage, brokerage to crypto.

JIM: Excellent. And with that, we’re going to get into the meat of the discussion here—how to open a Fidelity Crypto account. We have a trio of questions that came in from viewers from when they registered for the livestream. Angie wants to know, “How do I get started with crypto at Fidelity? Do I need a crypto account?” You sure do. We’re about to get there, Angie.

Mike wants to know what’s the easiest way to open a Fidelity Crypto account is. And Charles has essentially the same question, Dan. How do I get this done?

DAN: Yeah. Well, let’s get into it. This is the best part. Here’s the demo. So we’re going to go ahead, and we’re going to start on the Fidelity.com desktop platform. So we’ll show today both the desktop as well as the mobile. And so the first screen we’re going to show here is our Portfolio Summary page.

And what you’ll see here, you may be familiar with, but we have a test account loaded up. And it has your accounts on the left side, some information about those accounts, and some other useful activities. One thing to note, you will see, when interacting with the Fidelity Crypto account specifically, there is a watermark. So it’s a light gray background with an icon.

So whenever you are interacting with the Fidelity Crypto account, you should be able to recognize that by seeing the watermark behind the screens. But, specifically, to go ahead and open the account, I’m going to navigate here down to the bottom left of the screen. You’ll see a plus icon. And from there, you can go ahead and open an account.

This is going to give you options to open a number of different accounts that we have at Fidelity—IRAs, planning advice accounts. But what we’re looking for specifically today here is the crypto account. So I’m going to scroll down just a little bit, and here you’ll see “See all accounts.”

And then you’ll see there’s 50-plus accounts. Just for an ability to filter, we are looking for our crypto account. And so there are a couple accounts here. Jim, I’ll let you speak to what’s in front of us here today.

JIM: Absolutely, Dan. And just to limit the scope again, we’re only going to be talking about Fidelity Crypto accounts right now for holding spot crypto. But as you can see on Dan’s screen there, Fidelity Crypto for IRAs is also an option. It’s a little bit out of scope for what we’re going to be talking about today, but I will say, we did a full livestream episode about whether or not a Fidelity Crypto IRA might be something worth considering.

You can check that out by going either to Fidelity.com/Crypto, as I mentioned a moment ago, or Fidelity.com/CoveringCryptoLivestream, which is the library for all of our past episodes where you’ll find that IRA episode. Thanks, Dan.

DAN: Great. Thanks, Jim. So pretty self-explanatory here. We’re going to be able to open the account with this green button. But before I do, I just want to call out what you’ll see here, and you’ll see throughout the experience, we do hyperlink out disclosures, risk notices, things that you want to make sure that you familiarize yourself with as you continue on through the process.

So I’ll call that out as we go along here as well. But please make sure that you take time and understand the different disclosures for the product. So I’m going to go ahead and click “Open an account.” And this is setting up the experience.

So with the Fidelity Crypto account, as we’ve mentioned, this is where you will be able to trade crypto within the app. You can start as little as a dollar and build your knowledge along the way. And as I mentioned, there are hyperlinks. You can learn all about the product and our different offerings, as well as disclosures, if you want to learn more. So I do encourage you to click those.

Click “Let’s go.” And here, as we’ve mentioned before with the two-account structure, if you have a brokerage account already, you can use that existing brokerage account. But if you don’t have a brokerage account and would like to have the crypto account, we can go ahead and open both the brokerage and the crypto account in one flow. And that’s what we’ll demonstrate here today.

Click “Next.” As I’m going through the ownership, I can choose either an individual ownership or a joint ownership.

If I do click “Joint,” I would choose if it’s Joint with Rights of Survivorship or Joint Tenants in Common with some additional information about those for you to learn more. For simplicity’s sake, we are going to open an individual account in this flow. And click “Next.”

And so, here’s just some information about ourselves that we’re going to need to enter. You’re going to see some information that is in our test account. And so, we will just have some of it pre- filled. If we need additional information, we would go ahead and type that in.

So I’m just going to add in an address. We do need to select our citizenship. And then, it may ask you some information as well about employment.

And if you have any securities industry regulations. So please, if you are a part of that industry, make sure that you are reading through and answering all the questions that you need to. Just for our purposes, in this test, we’re going to go ahead and click “Retired,” without any securities industry regulations.

And then here you’ll see, we are going to open both the brokerage as well as the crypto account. This is the tool to structures. You see the information here about the test account and the employment information, and then importantly, all the disclosures, prospectus, and information.

And we do encourage you to please take your time and read through these documents to make sure you feel comfortable with the process. But once you’re through all of that, you go ahead, click “Open accounts,” and you’ll be set to go. That’s how you do it on desktop, Jim.

JIM: Excellent. So that’s, as you said, the desktop, the Fidelity.com experience. Some folks prefer a mobile experience. Do it on their phone, do it on a tablet, something like that. So Dan, can you walk us through—it’s going to look and feel very similar but a little bit different. Worth calling out some of the differences.

DAN: Yeah, for sure. So, again, here in a test account on the latest app. And would encourage you that when you’re participating on the mobile application that you go ahead and go to the App Store® or the Google Play® store, and you get that latest version of the application. That’ll give you the latest software that’s out there.

But here, this is the account summary page from the mobile version, similar to what you saw on desktop. You’ll see the list of accounts that you have. And we’re just going to move down a little bit on the screen here, and you’re going to see the “Open or link an account.” And we’ll click “Open.” And here, similar, that plus icon to go ahead and open an account.

Here, you have your options, similar to what we saw on desktop—Investing, Retirement, and we are looking today for the Crypto account. Let me go ahead and click “Next.” And, again, as mentioned, you see the other options, the IRAs, which Jim talked about being in another special. But today, we are looking at our general trading and investment opportunity. Click “Get Started.”

Again, information about the account. If you do want to learn more, you can click go ahead and learn more. There is a slide sheet. And just like you saw within the desktop, we have all of our disclosures and everything. We would encourage you to take your time and make sure that you’re clicking through and reading the information as you’re opening the account. Click “Let’s go.”

We are going to open both the brokerage and the crypto for this flow and be able to allow the customer to have that all within one flow. And again, as mentioned, if you have a brokerage account, you don’t need to open a new brokerage account. We’ll just open the crypto account. But for our purposes here, just showing you how we would open them both.

Again, select either “Just for me,” or if you are looking to share it, it has the same functionality where you can choose Joint with Rights of Survivorship or Joint Tenants in Common.

This is very similar to what we saw on the desktop. You can see the Account Opening Agreements. Information about prospectus. If you do want to review your personal information, this is where that test information about the employment status and things that we’re able to bring in. You can go ahead and see that here.

You can also see in this that we’ve got everything right, that we’re going to open both the accounts. You can see the profile as well. So everything should be included within that. And as long as you are comfortable to go, you’re going to come down to the bottom, and you’re going to click “Open my accounts.” And that, Jim, is how you do it on mobile.

JIM: Now, someone paying attention to your screen shares might be able to answer Emilia’s question for us. But we did get another question that came in from Emilia who wants to know how much money does she need to open a Fidelity Crypto account? And so again, you may have seen on Dan’s screens.

But luckily the answer to that is as little as $1, which is pretty good because I don’t think many of us can afford to buy a whole bitcoin these days. And maybe, you can buy a whole litecoin. But if you don’t want to, maybe you want to start off slow and learn by doing.

That’s really the idea behind being able to start with as little as $1, to build up that confidence, to start slow, maybe to learn the space, to learn the platform, to learn how to work inside the account. That’s really the point of starting with as little as $1.

So, Emilia, you only need $1. It’s meant to help you on your learning journey. We have a lot of educational resources that are all trying to help you on your learning journey when it comes to crypto. Building up that crypto confidence, I would direct you again to Fidelity.com/Crypto as a great URL to bookmark and return to when you’re looking for information throughout the process.