Later this year, the 23,000 companies that use Fidelity to administer their retirement plans will have the option to put bitcoin on the menu.

Under the plan, Fidelity would let savers allocate as much as 20% of their nest eggs to bitcoin, though that threshold could be lowered by plan sponsors. Mr. Gray said it would be limited to bitcoin initially.

]Fidelity] administers plans with more than 20 million participants and $2.7 trillion in assets-under-administration. Fidelity also has a growing presence in the cryptocurrency business, including a trading and custody platform it launched in 2018 that caters to hedge funds and other sophisticated investors.

The fees on the account will be between 0.75% and 0.9%, depending on the client, not counting trading costs.

Fidelity’s interest in cryptocurrencies began nearly a decade ago, when Abigail Johnson, now chairman and chief executive, began to hold weekly internal meetings to discuss digital assets and blockchain technology. The firm started mining bitcoin in 2015. [...] In 2020, it opened its own crypto fund for wealthy customers.