Bitcoin Daily: Fidelity Investments Aims to Expand Crypto Team by 70% This Year; S. Korea Exchanges Face Licensing Deadline

Fidelity Investments is bolstering its digital assets team as crypto sees a glut of financial advisers, family offices and other investors get on board, according to Bloomberg Monday (Sept. 13).

Fidelity provides institutional services like digital coin custody to trade execution. The company wants to increase its digital asset employees by 70% by the end of the year. The hiring spree comes after the company in August filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a bitcoin investment fund.

Read more: Fidelity To Launch Bitcoin Fund For Rich Investors

In other news, South Korean crypto exchanges only have under two weeks to meet new regulation compliance requirements, per a report by Cointelegraph Monday.

The companies will have to submit registration applications for an official Financial Services Commission (FSC) license. The industry has heavily contested this due to the obligation for the exchanges to prove they’re operating with real-name accounts at South Korean banks.

Read also: S. Korean Crypto Traders Expect New Market Rules to Cause $2.6B in Losses

The FSC has said that rule is in place because customers want more protection for their assets for smaller crypto platforms.

In other news, Hedge fund Brevan Howard has said as of Monday (Sept. 13) that it will expand its crypto business, according to Reuters.

This comes as crypto is gaining momentum around the world. The asset manager, famous for betting on macroeconomic trends, said it plans to launch a new unit, BH Digital, which will manage crypto.

See also: Hedgefund Billionaire Plans $1B Crypto Venture

Meanwhile, tech company Recur, which works on letting customers buy and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has raised $33 million in a Series A round, a press release says.

Co-founders Zach Bruch and Trevor George said Recur is “building a future where NFTs can be taken anywhere as tokens of personal expression, community membership, and fandom, among so many other use cases.”

“Our goal is to give fans the opportunity to own pieces of the stories and IPs they love, with real value retained across any future chain,” they said. “Further, we see a future where the standard for a decentralized recurring royalty is embedded, giving the creator due credit as assets are exchanged over and over again.”

Also, Sheena Shah will be leading a new Morgan Stanley team to research cryptocurrency as Wall Street continues its endeavors into digital assets, according to Bloomberg Monday (Sept. 13).

Shah will act as the lead analyst and her team will research the impact of crypto on equities and fixed income around the world. The move comes as numerous big institutions, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, get more into crypto.

Shah is currently head of Group of 10 (G10) foreign-exchange strategy for Europe.