Financial institutions must operate with what Fidelity calls an "ambidextrous" approach—running traditional and digital asset infrastructure simultaneously at scale—according to Cynthia Lo Bessette, head of digital asset management at Fidelity Investments.
Bessette made the case at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, laying out a framework that Fidelity has branded "hold, use, build" to integrate customers into crypto across Bitcoin, Ether and Solana.
The firm's $7.1 trillion in assets under management gives it real leverage to shape infrastructure. Fidelity's commitment to building its own underlying crypto-market infrastructure—a philosophy Fidelity head Abigail Johnson established when she began mining Bitcoin at the firm's offices in 2014—gives the firm a structural advantage.
"The best way to learn in this ecosystem is to build, and the more that we build, the more that we can see the Lego bricks and how they connect," Bessette said. That hands-on approach has positioned Fidelity second in the Bitcoin ETF market, behind only BlackRock.
The "hold" phase launched with crypto ETFs in early 2024, giving clients direct exposure to digital assets. The "use" phase expanded in fall 2025 with a Solana ETF that lets investors capture on-chain staking rewards directly from the protocol. Fidelity also created a tokenized money-market fund native to Ethereum that earns interest by investing in U.S. Treasury bonds—a token held in digital wallets that generates yield on-chain.
The firm is now developing collateral mechanisms. Token holders will soon use the digital money-market fund as collateral for loans, providing on-chain access to capital usable as margin or collateral for other digital asset positions.
The "build" phase represents Fidelity's differentiator: offering investors rare customization by programming compliance requirements into portfolios. Bessette described this as creating "hyper-personalized experiences across multiple asset types," with tokenized non-traditional assets incorporated into dynamic portfolios.
Fidelity's push in digital assets contributed to record 2025 results. The company's total revenue jumped 15 percent, reaching $37.7 billion.
Bessette acknowledged in a September appearance at the SIFMA Digital Assets Conference that the market lacks a "minimum viable ecosystem." Deeper liquidity, robust infrastructure and improved market structure remain critical to scaling tokenized assets beyond current use cases.
