Hello everyone! I hope your January is feeling hopeful.
You’re reading the free weekly Crypto is Macro Now, where I reshare/update a couple of posts from the week, and include something from outside the crypto/macro sphere that is currently inspiring me (it’s a fascinating world out there).
Feel free to share this with friends and colleagues, and if you like this newsletter, do please hit the ❤ button at the bottom – I’m told it feeds the almighty algorithm.
In this newsletter:
What are investment advisers afraid of when it comes to crypto?
The global crypto scramble
Some of the topics discussed this week:
US jobs: confirmation of a trend
What’s ahead on inflation?
The oil price isn’t helping
What are investment advisers afraid of with crypto?
Banks buying BTC: not what it seems
Sony’s blockchain backlash
Stable prices, or stable inflation?
Inflation stability in the driving seat
The global crypto scramble
A year ago
Luxembourg’s DLT bill
Fractional bonds for treasury management
A tokenization blockchain?
Progress on DLT Pilot Regime
What are investment advisers afraid of when it comes to crypto?
The latest investment adviser survey from crypto asset manager Bitwise is out – this is a useful document to gauge what professional investors are thinking about crypto assets, and how education on the sector is progressing.
A key takeaway is the increase in interest and awareness, and also the importance of the ETF launches early last year. The report also highlights the urgency, as it shows clients will manage their own crypto investments if their advisers won’t do it for them. And, perhaps even more importantly, it helps us to understand persistent barriers.
Some highlights:
The majority of respondents (>70%) are registered investment advisers (RIAs) or independent broker-dealer representatives. The rest are financial planners, heads of family offices, wirehouse representatives or other professional investors.
78% of respondents said they were not allocating crypto to clients’ accounts. That’s high, but a notable improvement on the previous year, when almost 90% answered in the negative.
(all charts from The Bitwise/VettaFi 2025 Benchmark Survey of Financial Advisor Attitudes Toward Crypto Assets)
In the previous survey, 8% of respondents said they would definitely or probably allocate crypto to clients’ portfolios in the coming year. Going into 2025, that percentage has increased to 18%.
It’s surprising that this figure is not higher, since last year, 41% of RIAs had BTC in their personal portfolios. This year, the percentage has climbed to 55%. For independent broker-dealer representatives, the percentage climbed from 25% to 44%.
In late 2023, 58% said that some of their clients had allocated to crypto on their own. Now, that percentage increased to 70%.
Of those that have already allocated crypto to clients’ portfolios, 57% said they were likely to increase the weighting this year.
The bulk of adviser interest is in ETFs, of spot crypto and of crypto equities. This is unsurprising given the convenience, and highlights how much the complication of custody was a barrier, as well as the lack of a strong institutional signal. Put differently, with BlackRock and other big names talking about crypto publicly, investment advisers can no longer afford to ignore the market.
As always, even more interesting than signs of progress in awareness are the obstacles that still remain. Regulatory concerns are still the #1 worry, with 50% of respondents checking this box – this may seem surprisingly high still, but we have to remember that investment advisers are by nature conservative, and they probably want to wait for evidence the incoming administration will be able to remove the systemic hostility. A positive sign is that this percentage is down from last year’s 63%.
There was also improvement in concerns about a lack of a clear valuation strategy, with 31% citing this barrier vs 42% last year. This concern is understandable as there is no established valuation method, and many advisers like to be able to justify their recommendations with reasoned forecasts and clear numbers.
The impression that crypto is for criminals has also markedly improved, with a drop from 42% of respondents citing this barrier, to 22%. This is a very big win. (Perplexingly, 14% still think crypto is a scam – we have much work to do yet.)
Intriguingly, “lack of understanding” wasn’t much of an issue last year, with only a 12% response rate. In the latest survey, 22% of respondents cited it as a reason to stay away from crypto assets. This is despite the considerable marketing efforts of big investment names – but, we can probably attribute the move to how some knowledge makes us feel more ignorant than no knowledge, when we don’t even know what we don’t know. (Cough, I may or may not have personal experience with this.)
See also:
The opportunities hidden in the Bitwise survey (2024)
The global crypto scramble
Late last year, I commented that one of the many positive side effects of Trump’s win would be an international scramble to set up crypto market frameworks as nations start to worry about being left behind. Up until now, they could take their time because the US wasn’t moving on digital assets – now, the race is real.
And we’re seeing the results. Over the past ten days alone, we’ve learned that:
The Malaysian government is reportedly exploring a crypto regulatory framework, according to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who met with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) on a recent trip to Abu Dhabi. The PM is quotes as saying: “We feel that Malaysia should not be left behind while mired in an old financial system.”
(photo by Toni Pomar on Unsplash)
Thailand is considering allowing the listing of spot crypto ETFs, as well as a sandbox in tourist destination Phuket for Bitcoin transactions in certain services.
South Korea is reportedly planning to allow institutional investors to trade cryptocurrencies – until now, this has only been open to KYC-ed retail investors. Institutional investors have not been officially banned from the activity, but banks were been instructed to stop them from opening accounts on exchanges. There are also signs the country might allow the listing of spot crypto ETFs.
Singapore issued more than double the number of crypto licenses in 2024 than in the previous year.
Cambodia has published a set of digital asset rules for banks and payment service providers, which allow exposure to tokenized assets and qualifying stablecoins. They can’t hold cryptocurrencies directly yet, but it’s a start, and apparently they can offer crypto services to clients.
Kenya has drafted crypto regulations for virtual asset service providers, to “guide the development of a fair, competitive, and stable market for virtual assets”.
I might have missed some headlines, and there’s no doubt more of this to come. On the grounds that regulation gives guidelines and some security to builders and investors, this is good news all around.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
(in this section, I share stuff that has NOTHING to do with macro or crypto, ‘cos it’s the weekend and life is interesting)
Last weekend, I watched the latest masterpiece in the Wallace & Gromit series, “A Vengeance Most Fowl”. Utterly delightful.
It was charming, funny, technically brilliant as well as aesthetically gorgeous, with a plot line that hits on all sorts of flashpoints but does so with nostalgic charm while taking you on some spectacular chase scenes.
It’s about the risks in tech disruption and artificial intelligence, softened with a retro lens and a familiar feel. It’s about obsession, ego and dastardly plans. It’s about the strength of tradition and the pull of modernization. But most of all, it’s about loyalty, love, and the beauty in small pleasures.
I might watch it again this weekend.
DISCLAIMER: I never give trading ideas, and NOTHING I say is investment advice! I hold some BTC, ETH and a tiny amount of some smaller tokens, but they’re all long-term holdings – I don’t trade.