Abigail Johnson

Credibility for bitcoin? OH YEAH, how about a big thumbs up from Fidelity. You may have heard of Fidelity, it just the worlds largest asset management firm and the firm's CEO Abigail Johnson is a big bitcoin (digital currencies) fan. She's in. She 'mines' coins. She takes bitcoins in the company canteen. Soon Fidelity clients will even be able to access cryptocurrency balances on the Fidelity website. Hmmmm, still thinking this bitcoin thingy is just a passing fad??? HELLO!! (Bill Taylor/CEO) "The head of one of the world’s largest asset management firms came out today (May 23) as a huge fan of bitcoin. Abigail Johnson, chief executive of Fidelity, which manages $1.9 trillion in mutual fund assets, told an audience at the 2017 Consensus conference—a blockchain technology summit—in New York that she was there because she “loves this stuff.”

“I’m a believer,” she said. “I’m one of the few standing before you today from a large financial services company that has not given up on digital currencies.”

Johnson announced that her customers would be able to see cryptocurrency balances on Fidelity’s website, if they held an account with Coinbase, one of the largest providers of storage and trading services in the cryptocurrency business. This feature was already available to Fidelity employees, she said, and customers would gain access to it in the second or third quarter of this year, according to Reuters.

Johnson also revealed a number of other Fidelity projects underway to figure out how to harness the potential of bitcoin and other digital currencies, which she said could “fundamentally change market structures and perhaps even the architecture of the internet itself.”

One of Fidelity’s projects is mining bitcoin and ethereum, which Johnson said was started for educational purposes, but now turns a tidy profit. “We set up a small bitcoin and ethereum mining operation…that miraculously now is actually making a lot of money,” she said..."

Sourcee: Quartz