How Does Fidelity Crypto Work? Account Setup, Fees, and Available Coins

The first time I bought Bitcoin through Fidelity, I didn’t download their app or set up a new password. Instead, I just tapped a button inside the same account where my old 401(k) rollover had been sitting untouched for the last 5 years. 

Fidelity Digital Assets has been building toward this moment for a long time. The company started mining Bitcoin back in 2014 and formally launched in 2018. What you get today is Fidelity Crypto. They give you a way to buy, sell, and transfer cryptocurrency inside the same brokerage where you might already hold index funds or a Roth IRA. 

In this post, I’ll walk you through how the account works, what it costs, which coins you can trade, and whether the newer Fidelity Crypto IRA is worth your attention.

Key Takeaways

• Fidelity Crypto charges a flat 1% fee on every trade, with no separate trading commission.
• You can currently trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Solana, plus Fidelity’s own stablecoin, a noticeably smaller lineup than dedicated exchanges offer.
• A Fidelity Crypto IRA exists for Traditional, Roth, and Rollover accounts, but it’s not yet available to residents of California or Oregon.

What Is Fidelity Crypto and Who Runs It?

Fidelity Crypto is a spot trading service. That means you own the actual coin, not a derivative or a promise of one. It’s operated by Fidelity Digital Assets, an OCC-chartered trust company that also handles custody, using an omnibus structure with cold-vaulted storage rather than individually segregated wallets.

But it comes with a small difference. Fidelity also sells crypto exposure through a completely different product, like the ETFs that track coin prices, and they trade inside a regular brokerage account, no separate crypto account required. I’ll unpack how those differ from the direct account a little further down.

It works like a simplified crypto exchange bolted onto a brokerage app you probably already have installed, without lending, staking, or futures trading built in. But it requires a small clarification, since a lot of people assume that a crypto platform means all three.

How to Open a Fidelity Crypto Account

Opening the account is genuinely fast, faster than I expected given how much paperwork Fidelity usually asks for on other products.

Eligibility and state availability

To open an account, you need to be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years of age, and a resident in a state where Fidelity Digital Assets operates. And as of 2026, the base account is available in all 50 states, though individual coins can still be restricted by state.

Oregon is a good example of that last row. Residents there can open the base account but currently can’t buy, sell, or deposit Solana, even though the account itself is fully open to them. 

Step-by-step setup process

1. Log into your existing Fidelity account, or open one if you’re new to Fidelity.
2. Navigate to the crypto section and answer a few eligibility questions; Fidelity keeps this part short.
3. Agree to the Fidelity Crypto customer agreement and risk disclosures.
4. Link your funding source, typically your existing Fidelity brokerage cash balance.
5. Transfer funds from your brokerage account into your separate crypto account.
6. Place your first buy order.

That two-account structure in steps 4 and 5 trips people up. Fidelity deliberately keeps your crypto account separate from your brokerage account, so money has to move between the two before you can place a trade. It’s an extra step, but it also means your crypto holdings never accidentally mix with your stock settlement cash.

How Fidelity Crypto Works

Once funded, trading feels pretty close to buying a stock. All you’ve to do is pick a coin, enter a dollar amount or quantity, and place a market order. There’s no options chain here or any advanced order types like stop-limits.

Before your first trade, try to understand a few things,

• Trading runs close to 24/7, unlike stock markets that close on weekends and holidays.
• Your crypto holdings show up alongside your stocks and funds in the same portfolio view, handy if you’d rather check one dashboard than five separate apps.
• Custody sits entirely with Fidelity Digital Assets, in cold-vaulted storage and monitored facilities rather than a hot wallet you’d have to manage yourself.
• As of 2025, you can now deposit and withdraw supported coins to external wallets, something the platform didn’t originally allow.

That last point is the biggest functional change to the platform in the past year. Early Fidelity Crypto was a closed loop. You could buy and sell, but you couldn’t move coins anywhere else. That’s no longer true, and it matters if you ever want to self-custody or move assets to another exchange down the line.

Fidelity Crypto Fees Explained

Fidelity markets this as commission-free trading, and technically that’s accurate. There’s no separate commission line item on your confirmation. What you’re actually paying is a 1% fee built into every buy and sell price.

Imagine you made a $500 trade, and this is how it’ll look,

Fidelity beats Coinbase’s standard retail pricing, but it’ll likely lose on cost to a dedicated exchange if you’re trading often or in size. For someone making occasional trades and valuing simplicity over the absolute cheapest spread, 1% is a reasonable, transparent price.

What Cryptocurrencies Can You Buy on Fidelity?

This is where Fidelity Crypto shows its limits. Fidelity’s account minimum is $0, and you can trade with as little as $1, but the coin selection tops out at Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Solana, a fraction of what Kraken (roughly 772 coins) or Crypto.com (around 480) offer.

Fidelity added its own stablecoin, the Fidelity Digital Dollar, in early 2026, and it trades with no fee at all against US dollars.

So, if you’re hunting for altcoins, DeFi tokens, or anything outside the top handful of cryptocurrencies by market cap, this platform will disappoint you. Fidelity built this lineup on purpose, curated around the biggest names in the market for people who want simple exposure, not a full exchange experience.

Fidelity Crypto Funds vs. Crypto Account

These two products get confused constantly, so let’s try separating them.

A Fidelity Crypto account, the one this whole article is about, gives you direct ownership of the coin itself, held in custody by Fidelity Digital Assets.

Fidelity’s crypto funds and ETPs work differently. Products like FBTC and FETH track the price of the underlying cryptocurrency and trade through your regular brokerage account, no separate crypto account or onboarding required.

Here’s a simple way to decide between them:

• Want to actually own the coin, transfer it, or eventually move it to an external wallet? Use the direct crypto account.
• Want simple price exposure inside your existing brokerage account, with no new account to set up? A crypto ETP is probably the easier fit.

Both solve different problems for different investors, and the better fit depends on whether you want actual ownership or simple price exposure.

Fidelity Crypto IRA: Holding Bitcoin for Retirement

Fidelity launched its Crypto IRA in April 2025, and it’s rare among major brokerages. Most retirement providers won’t touch direct crypto ownership at all. You can open it as a Traditional, Roth, or Rollover IRA, though it’s currently unavailable to residents of California or Oregon.

The account structure mirrors the taxable version. A linked brokerage IRA funds the account first, then you move money into the crypto IRA to trade. Tax treatment follows the standard IRA rules. Like tax-deferred growth for Traditional and Rollover accounts, and tax-free for Roth.

A few details to know before you fund it:

• There are no fees to open or maintain the IRA, and no custody fee, but the standard 1% trading fee still applies to every buy and sell.
• Eligible coins match the standard account: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Solana.
• Contribution limits follow the same IRS rules as any other IRA of that type, not a special crypto-specific cap.

I’m not a tax advisor, and this article isn’t tax advice, so talk to an expert before deciding how crypto fits your retirement allocation. Structurally speaking, though, this is one of the few ways to hold direct crypto inside a tax-advantaged account without setting up a separate, more complicated self-directed IRA custodian.

Pros and Cons of Using Fidelity Crypto

Where it wins:

• The platform’s integrated with your existing Fidelity brokerage and IRA accounts.
• Transparent, flat pricing with no hidden account or maintenance fees.
• A crypto IRA option most competitors simply don’t offer.
• Institutional custody backed by a company that’s run crypto infrastructure since 2014.

Where it falls short:

• A tiny coin selection compared to dedicated exchanges.
• No staking, no margin, no advanced order types.
• Crypto holdings carry no FDIC or SIPC protection, a risk that applies to every crypto platform, not just Fidelity, but it’s easy to forget when it’s sitting right next to your insured brokerage balance.
• The flat 1% fee gets expensive really fast for frequent or large-volume traders.

Final Thoughts

If you already bank with Fidelity and want a simple, buy-and-hold exposure to Bitcoin or Ethereum, or you want crypto inside a retirement account, this platform really makes sense. It’s actually boring, but in a good way, and boring is underrated when it comes to custody of your money.

If you’re an active trader chasing altcoins, staking yields, or the lowest possible spread, look elsewhere. Fidelity built this for people who treat crypto as one line item in a bigger portfolio, not a full-time hobby.

For more info on crypto and all things Web3, visit Blockverse.

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