Fidelity Investments just made Wall Street's biggest bet yet on blockchain infrastructure. The $4.5 trillion asset manager announced it's launching the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), a dollar-pegged stablecoin arriving in the "coming weeks" that will trade directly on Ethereum. The move marks the most significant endorsement of crypto rails from traditional finance since Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law last summer, creating the regulatory framework that's now unleashing a wave of institutional stablecoin launches.
Fidelity Investments is making its most aggressive play yet into the crypto economy. The financial services behemoth announced today it's launching the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), an Ethereum-based stablecoin that will let investors buy and sell dollar-denominated digital currency directly through its platforms within weeks, according to a company press release.
The announcement sent ripples through both Wall Street and crypto circles. FIDD will trade at a fixed $1 price point and is backed by cash reserves, cash equivalents, and short-term US Treasuries, CoinDesk reports. That puts it in direct competition with existing stablecoin giants like Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, but with the regulatory credibility and institutional muscle that only a firm managing $4.5 trillion in assets can bring.
The timing isn't coincidental. Fidelity's move comes seven months after President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law last July, fundamentally reshaping how stablecoins operate in the United States. The legislation introduced a 100 percent reserve backing requirement - meaning every dollar of stablecoin must be matched by actual assets - and crucially gave stablecoin holders priority over other creditors if an issuer goes bankrupt. That legal framework appears designed specifically to prevent another , which wiped out $40 billion in value in 2022 when its algorithmic backing mechanism failed catastrophically.
