Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise Asset Management, has reported a shift in crypto adoption among the country’s top financial advisors.
Reflecting on his speech at the Barron’s Advisor 100 Summit last Friday, Hougan noted that 70% of the attending financial advisors now personally hold cryptocurrency, a noteworthy increase from just two years ago when only 10% to 20% owned such assets.
70% of Advisors Now Hold Crypto
According to him, this shift shows growing confidence in digital assets among the financial elite. “A wave of the most powerful people in finance are finally allocating to crypto,” Hougan wrote in a memo to clients on Tuesday.
The summit brings together the top financial advisors 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 owned Bitcoin or another crypto asset in their personal portfolios. “Nearly every hand in the room went up,” he noted, estimating that about 70% of the attendees held digital assets.
Having posed the same question at the summit over the last three years, he observed that previous responses were in the 10% to 20% range.
“There’s a very sophisticated technical word that economists use for this kind of year-over-year phenomenon: whoa.”
Client Allocations
Despite this personal interest in crypto, the number of advisors allocating cryptocurrency to client portfolios remains low. “When I asked how many had allocations to Bitcoin in client accounts, very few kept their hands raised,” Hougan observed. This is largely due to restrictions from broker-dealers that do not yet allow advisors to purchase spot Bitcoin ETFs for clients.
However, he believes this will change soon. He explained that advisors typically start by allocating to crypto in their personal portfolios before extending the opportunity to clients. Drawing from his experience at Bitwise, the CIO predicted that “client allocations typically follow 6 to 12 months later.”
The memo also highlighted several bullish factors currently supporting the cryptocurrency market, including the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate cut in four years and the SEC’s approval of options on spot Bitcoin ETFs.
He also pointed to the recent approval of these ETFs by one of the country’s largest wirehouses in Morgan Stanley as a sign that the financial infrastructure for crypto is steadily improving. But in his opinion, the raised hands at Palm Beach represented “one of the most powerful signs of the times.”
“Buying a little bit of Bitcoin is incredibly powerful for people,” Hougan noted, explaining that once individuals hold and track the asset, curiosity replaces fear, leading to a deeper engagement with digital assets.
