Here's how the multi-trillion dollar wealth management industry is opening up to bitcoin
Wealth and financial advisors oversee trillions of dollars in assets. While a wide range of financial services, from trading firms to exchanges to hedge funds, have warmed up to the crypto market, wealth and financial advisors have largely remained on the sidelines. During the latest episode of The Scoop, Michael Batnick, director of research at Ritholtz Wealth Management, and Jeremy Schwartz, EVP and global chief investment officer at Wisdom Tree Asset Management, walked listeners through the RWM WisdomTree Crypto Index and the state of crypto wealth management today. Ritholtz Wealth Management and Wisdom Tree Asset Management recently announced the launch of a new diversified crypto index for financial advisors in December 2021. Through a partnership with Onramp Invest, the index can be offered by financial advisors via separately managed accounts (SMAs). "The US regulators still can't get their heads wrapped around a bitcoin spot ETF, which we think is the best structure for a 100 percent allocation," noted Wisdom Tree's Jeremy Schwartz. In Batnick's view, the crypto market hasn't done a good job marketing itself to advisors. A report released earlier this year by asset management firm Bitwise suggests that 16% of financial advisors have allocated to crypto in their clients' accounts — an increase from 9% in 2021. Batnick suspects that number might be far lower. "An informal survey, I'd say we're under 1 percent," he contended. "The reason why is because I think that the products that were available to financial advisers have not been suitable or at least had difficulties getting advisers comfortable wrapping their arms around the solution." Episode 10 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Michael Batnick, Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management and Jeremy Schwartz, EVP & Global Chief Investment Officer at Wisdom Tree Asset Management. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Chainalysis Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com. About Coinbase Prime Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime. About Chainalysis Chainalysis is the blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Our data powers investigation, compliance, and market intelligence software that has been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile criminal cases and grow consumer access to cryptocurrency safely. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.