Fidelity Investments is rounding out its digital assets strategy, participating in a $1.9 million funding round for crypto asset market and network data vendor Coin Metrics.
Fidelity was joined by lead investor Castle Island Ventures and other participants Highland Capital Partners and Dragonfly Capital.
Coin Metrics was created in 2017 as an open source blockchain network data and analytics project with the aim of mapping all the operational and economic activity occurring on a public blockchain that can be observed by running a full node.
Incorporated in August last year, the venture hired market data veteran Tim Rice as co-founding CEO. Rice has held executive positions at Tradeweb, Moneyline Telerate, Thomson Reuters and Markit where he built out large scale institutional-grade pricing and reference data business. He spent the past two years at ConsenSys where he gained insights into bridging the gap between crypto and traditional capital markets.
"All of our investors are bought into the idea that the next phase of cryptoasset investing requires robust comprehensive data and infrastructure. Having this premier group as investors is a great vote of confidence," says Rice. "We are building a world-class data company from the ground up to ensure the type of support and quality that top tier funds and asset managers expect. Coin Metrics is leveraging its groundbreaking work in on-chain network data by deploying the same rigor to exchange market data supported by a state-of-the-art data collection and delivery infrastructure."
For Fidelity, the investment forms one part of its overarching plans for its newly created Digital Asset unit.
The firm is currently putting its new cryptocurrency custody and trading platform through its paces with a handful of selected institutional clients ahead of a full-scale commercial launch.