‘We’ve reached a tipping point’ on bitcoin adoption, Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says

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Tom Jessop, head of Fidelity Digital Assets at Fidelity Investments, says that the maturation and adoption of digital assets as a class of investments will continue at a rapid pace in coming years, signaling that crypto may have turned a corner in traditional finance circles.

“I think we continue to see adoption at an accelerated pace for a host of reasons,” he said Wednesday afternoon during an interview at MarketWatch and Barron’s “Investing in Crypto” virtual event series.

Check out: U.S. is ‘behind the curve’ on crypto regulations, says SEC Commissioner Peirce

Jessop said that a backdrop of ultralow interest rates and an environment that has been stimulated by easy-money policies has helped to drive momentum into bitcoin and other assets, which are increasingly being seen as alternatives to assets that are considered richly priced by some measure and bonds that are offering meager yields.

The S&P 500 index booked its 18th record closing high of 2021 on Wednesday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average wasn’t far from its all-time high as the 10-year Treasury yielded around 1.66%.

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“We’re not going to get out of this stimulated environment anytime soon,” Jessop said. “I think we’ve reached a tipping point.”

“I think you’ve had the accumulated experience of now roughly 12 years of the bitcoin blockchain being operative since the genesis block in early 2009. And the pandemic, quite frankly, was a catalyst for institutional adoption, and specifically bitcoin and the narrative, or use-case, around digital gold,” Jessop said.

“Particularly, in an environment where we’ve seen unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic,” he said.

Fidelity has been at the vanguard of integrating digital assets into traditional investment portfolios. The asset manager was one of the first major institutions to explore bitcoin, starting in 2015. 

The company created the digital asset unit, which Jessop heads, in 2019.

Bitcoin was trading at $56,500 on Wednesday, up 95% so far this year.

Want to understand the future of cryptos and NFTs? Register for MarketWatch’s free live event: https://events.marketwatch.com/crypto/home