Fidelity is mining cryptocurrencies

Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest investment firms with $2.3 trillion in managed assets, is taking a long look at cryptocurrencies.

The company had already made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities.

Company had bought its mining hardware.

Beyond the firm’s internal work, it’s also now making cryptocurrency balances visible on the Fidelity website for customers that hold an account with Coinbase — one of the world’s biggest trading and storage service providers for the cryptocurrency market.

Fidelity becomes one of the largest financial services firm to speak publicly about its cryptocurrency operations, even as most of the large banks have begun experimenting with bitcoin, ethereum and other blockchain-based protocols internally.