The Intersection: Crypto and Wall Street This Week

As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week's top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly. 1. FIDELITY LAUNCHES CRYPTO TRADING PLATFORM: Fidelity Investments announced Monday the launch of a new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, which will offer enterprise-quality custody and trade execution services for digital assets to institutional investors such as hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries. "Our goal is to make digitally-native assets, such as bitcoin, more accessible to investors," said Chief Executive Officer Abigail Johnson. "We expect to continue investing and experimenting, over the long-term, with ways to make this emerging asset class easier for our clients to understand and use." 2. SONY DEVELOPING RIGHTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING BLOCKCHAIN: On Tuesday, Sony (SNE), Sony Music Entertainment, and Sony Global Education announced the development of a rights management system for digital content that utilizes blockchain technology that is based on Sony and Sony Global Education's previously developed system for authenticating, sharing, and rights management of educational data, and additionally features functionality for processing rights-related information. Through the technological development and commercialization of blockchain, including with this new system, Sony said it will continue exploring the possibilities that blockchain technology holds for Sony's business domains. 3. WATCHDOG CALLS FOR CRYPTO REGULATION: The Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based money-laundering watchdog, said cryptocurrency exchanges and other firms should be regulated or licensed to prevent digital assets from being used for money laundering and financing of terrorism, Reuters reported Friday. The FATF said all jurisdictions should take urgent legal and practical steps to stop the misuse of cryptocurrencies. 4. TZERO ISSUES PREFERRED TZERO TOKENS: tZERO, a portfolio company of Medici Ventures, Overstock.com's (OSTK) blockchain subsidiary, announced Tuesday it has completed the issuance of preferred tZERO security tokens. Tokens were issued to investors who had fully funded signed agreements for future equity prior to the August 6 close of the company's security token offering and tZERO raised $134M from over 1,000 global investors during its STO. "This is one of the first Security Token Offerings on a decentralized public network, and was conducted in full compliance with the U.S. securities laws. This is an exciting milestone for tZERO, and we are even more enthusiastic about the opportunities this will create for private and public companies," said tZERO CEO Saum Noursalehi. 5. GOLDMAN SACHS INVESTS IN BITGO: BitGo announced the second close of its Series B funding round on Thursday. The blockchain security company said new investors, Goldman Sachs' (GS) Principal Strategic Investments group and Galaxy Digital Ventures, a venture investment firm founded by Michael Novogratz, have joined Valor Equity Partners, Craft Ventures, DRW, and Redpoint Ventures, bringing the total amount raised in the round to $57.5M. The funding will support BitGo's development of its $1T crypto wallet. CRYPTO STOCK PLAYS: Cryptocurrency revenues have been pointed to as reasons to be bullish on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) in select research. Overstock, DPW Holdings (DPW), Kodak (KODK), Ideanomics (SSC), Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Pareteum (TEUM) and Social Reality (SRAX) are other stocks that have been touted, or promoted themselves, as a way to play the crypto theme. PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin rose about 2.8% this week to $6,428 in U.S. dollars, according to CoinDesk. WANT BITCOIN NEWS ALERTS?: To receive alerts on stories relating to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Fly subscribers can enter "Bitcoin" into the "Add symbols" box of their portfolios.