Fidelity Wants to Create an Ether ETF, Joining BlackRock in Doubling Down on Crypto

• Fidelity became the latest giant financial firm to seek to create an ether ETF.

• The SEC still needs to approve these applications for them to trade in the U.S. The regulator is mulling bitcoin ETFs, too.

• ETFs could make it far easier for the average person to invest money in a crypto-linked asset.

Money management giant Fidelity is seeking to create an exchange-traded fund that owns Ethereum’s ether (ETH), according to a Friday filing, joining rival BlackRock in strengthening its crypto embrace.

The Fidelity Ethereum Fund would be listed by an exchange owned by Cboe Global Markets, which posted the fling that revealed the existence of the proposed product. But first, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission must decide whether to approve the ether ETF, as it must for others including one from BlackRock, which was revealed earlier this month.

Fidelity and BlackRock also want to create ETFs that give investors easier access to an even bigger cryptocurrency: bitcoin (BTC). The SEC has yet to weigh in on those either.

ETFs that hold BTC or ETH, the biggest cryptocurrencies, could – according to optimists – dramatically shake up the crypto market. They are generally easier to buy than crypto; a normal, conventional brokerage account gives an investor access to all manner of ETFs, which trade just like stocks and track assets ranging from the whole stock market to gold, corn and sugar.

That could, in theory, bring in a flood of new investment money into digital assets – particularly with the marketing heft of famous firms like Fidelity and BlackRock.