Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

Rock bottom interest rates and fiscal stimulus has driven momentum in the crypto sector the Fidelity executive said.

Executives at investment giant Fidelity are confident that cryptocurrency market momentum will continue for the foreseeable future.

Speaking to MarketWatch on April 8, Tom Jessop who heads the investment firm’s crypto division said that he believes crypto has opened a new chapter in traditional finance circles and things have reached a tipping point for the industry.

Jessop stated that the maturation and adoption of crypto assets as an investment class will continue at a rapid pace in the coming years. There are a number of reasons according to the finance manager, one of which is extremely low interest rates in traditional finance.

This, coupled with an environment stimulated by monetary policies, has driven momentum for crypto markets. The Fidelity executive said that this environment is unlikely to change any time soon:

“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 added the narrative has been exacerbated by the unprecedented monetary stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, U.S. stimulus packages have topped $6 trillion with much of that money being freshly minted by the Federal Reserve.

Jessop is not the only finance executive to believe that Bitcoin and crypto has reached a tipping point. In early March, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz used the same phrase while commenting on the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF on Bloomberg:

“Bitcoin adoption has hit a tipping point and investors don’t want to sit on the sidelines,”

On March 24, Fidelity filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to list a new Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF). The Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust aims to track the asset’s daily performance using the Fidelity Bitcoin Index PR, an index derived from several price feeds.

Analyst at CFRA Research, VanEck, and Fidelity Investments, Todd Rosenbluth, opined that the SEC is likely to approve an ETF in the coming year or two.

Fidelity created the digital asset unit in 2019 and has been integrating digital assets into traditional investment portfolios ever since.