What are investment advisers afraid of with crypto?
plus, banks buying BTC, and Sony's blockchain
“An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.” – Alfred North Whitehead ||
Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.
Since many of you are new here (hello!), I should introduce myself again. My name’s Noelle. After 10 years in tradfi and 13 running an ecommerce business I founded, I started researching and writing about bitcoin in 2014. In 2016, I joined CoinDesk to launch their newsletters, went on to set up and run the institutional research team, and in 2021 moved to Genesis Trading to do the same. In 2022, I left to focus on what you see before you: commentary on the developments and narratives shaping the impact of crypto on the macro scene, and vice versa. I hope you find this useful or interesting or both.
Below, I look at the latest survey from Bitwise on investment adviser attitudes towards the crypto market – it always sheds light on both progress and remaining barriers.
I also show how the news that a big legacy bank has bought BTC is probably not the sign of institutional validation many seem to think.
And, I squint at what Sony’s blockchain backlash says about ecosystem development and misunderstandings.
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
What are investment advisers afraid of with crypto?
Banks buying BTC: not what it seems
Sony’s blockchain backlash
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WHAT I’M WATCHING:
What are investment advisers afraid of?
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.
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