70% of top US financial advisors now own crypto, client adoption could soon follow: Bitwise CIO

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, has reported a shift in cryptocurrency adoption among the nation’s top financial advisors.

Reflecting on his speech at the Barron’s Advisor 100 Summit last Friday, Hougan noted that 70% of financial advisors in attendance now personally hold cryptocurrency, a marked increase from just two years ago, when only 10% to 20% owned them. assets

70% of advisors now own Crypto

According to him, this change shows a growing confidence in digital assets among the financial elite. “A wave of the most powerful people in finance is finally turning to crypto,” Hougan wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

The summit brings together top financial advisers in the U.S. Hougan was invited to speak following the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including Bitwise’s BITB product, earlier this year.

In his speech, Bitwise’s CIO gauged the room by asking how many advisors held Bitcoin or another crypto asset in their personal wallets. “Almost every hand in the room went up,” he noted, estimating that about 70% of attendees had digital assets.

Having posed the same question at the summit for the past three years, he noted that previous responses were between 10% and 20%.

“There’s a very sophisticated technical word that economists use for this kind of phenomenon from year to year: whoa.”

Customer assignments

Despite this personal interest in crypto, the number of advisors allocating cryptocurrency to client portfolios remains low. “When I asked how many Bitcoin allocations they had in client accounts, very few kept their hands up,” Hougan observed. This is largely due to broker-dealer restrictions that still do not allow advisors to buy spot Bitcoin ETFs for clients.

However, he believes that will change soon. He explained that advisors typically start by assigning crypto to their personal portfolios before expanding the opportunity to clients. Based on his experience at Bitwise, the CIO predicted that “customer assignments typically follow 6-12 months later.”

The note also highlighted several bullish factors supporting the cryptocurrency market, including the US Federal Reserve’s first rate cut in four years and the SEC’s approval of options on Bitcoin ETFs at the time.

He also pointed to the recent approval of these ETFs by one of the country’s largest powerhouses in Morgan Stanley as a sign that the financial infrastructure of crypto is constantly improving. But in his view, the raised hands on Palm Beach represented “one of the most powerful signs of the times.”

“Buying some Bitcoin is incredibly powerful for people,” Hougan noted, explaining that once people hold and track the asset, curiosity replaces fear, leading to deeper engagement with digital assets.

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