Fidelity Investments plans to launch the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the price of Bitcoin via the Fidelity Bitcoin Index. Fidelity Digital Assets will store Wise Origin’s holdings. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which blocked nine applications for Bitcoin ETFs in 2018, must approve the plan. Fidelity Investments chief executive Abigail Johnson has long advocated the market potential of cryptocurrencies, and Fidelity was one of the first big financial firms to embrace them as an asset class. Continue reading Fidelity Reveals It Will Launch Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund

Bitcoin’s price surged above $50,000 for the first time yesterday as companies including Tesla, Mastercard, PayPal and BNY Mellon showed support for the cryptocurrency. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and plans to accept it as payment for its cars, while Mastercard added that it too would accept Bitcoin as payment for “some of its products.” Coin Metrics reported that Bitcoin broke the $50,000 metric by rising 3 percent on Tuesday to $50,487, and hitting a fresh record high of $51,715 earlier today. Meanwhile, SEC commissioner Hester Peirce has called for crypto regulation. Continue reading Bitcoin Tops $51,000 in Value as Major Firms Support Crypto

Although Bitcoin accounts for 70 percent of all the global digital assets’ market value, Tether is the world’s most widely used cryptocurrency, said CoinMarketCap, which revealed that Tether, despite the fact that it’s market capitalization is 30 times smaller than Bitcoin, has the highest daily and monthly trading volume. Tether surpassed Bitcoin in April and, said CoinMarketCap, has done so consistently since early August, at about $21 billion per day, with monthly trading volume 18 percent higher than Bitcoin’s. Continue reading Tether, Most Widely Used Cryptocurrency, Is Under Scrutiny