How should advisors approach crypto assets, especially those who, like Michael Kitces, aren't convinced they are viable assets for client accounts?
Just as they would approach every other asset, says Ben Cruikshank, head of Flourish Crypto, the newly launched turnkey investment solution providing RIAs access to cryptocurrency investing.
Flourish Crypto is part of Flourish, a larger financial products platform for RIAs owned by MassMutual, which last December invested $100 million in Bitcoin, a transaction facilitated by NYDIG, in which it has a minority stake.
Cruikshank, who was part of a panel at this week's Bitcoin for Advisors conference, said advisors should "take the tone and posture of more traditional financial assets," including a "real risk management approach," reviewing compliance requirements and the disclosures and reporting of retail trading platforms on which their clients may be buying cryptocurrencies.
"I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that a lot of what you find in the world of crypto has quite a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration and it's just not the way that advisors have been talking with and educating clients for decades," he said. "Come back to basics [that are] data-driven [and] research-driven; hedge your language; assess your risk."
"Education is key" for advisors, said Andy Edstrom, author of "Why Buy Bitcoin: Investing Today in the Money of Tomorrow," and a financial advisor at WESCAP Group in Glendale, Calif. "There is a lot to learn to understand this asset class." Edstrom invests only in Bitcoin as part of clients' small allocations to hard money assets that also include gold.
Steven Sanduski, an author, podcaster and founder of an advisor coaching business, suggested that advisors buy some Bitcoin for their personal accounts as part of their learning process.
