Survey: The Number of US Financial Advisors Allocating to Crypto in Client Portfolios Jumped 49% in 2020

A survey reveals that the number of U.S. financial advisors allocating to crypto in their clients’ portfolios surged significantly from 2019. The figures show that it rose 49% in 2020, from 6.3% to 9.4%.

A Vast Majority of the Advisors Also Have Personal Crypto Investments

According to the San Francisco-based asset management firm Bitwise, 58% of advisors allocating to crypto are independent Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs).

The report says that the finding is not a surprising one. In fact, RIAs do not have restrictions on which type of investments they can include in portfolios.

The study also reveals that the vast majority of advisors with clients investing in crypto had personal investments in the sphere. According to the report:

82% of advisors reporting client allocations to crypto also reported a personal investment in the space.

Advisors Are Still Interested in Increasing Their Crypto Positions

The report further notes that 78% of the surveyed advisors are thinking about increasing their clients’ crypto allocation in the next 12 months. However, 12% of them will keep “steady,” said the study.

Moreover, no advisors reported plans to decrease or remove their current crypto positions. The survey also adds:

The percentage of advisors planning to increase their clients’ allocation to crypto rose substantially this year; last year, just 42% of advisors with client allocations reported plans to increase that allocation.

Regarding the reasons for adding crypto-asset exposure to clients’ portfolios, the survey found a “sharp uptick” in advisors praising crypto’s “high potential returns.” Also, they pointed out crypto’s role in “inflation hedging” as an attractive feature for the asset class. Bitwise noted:

Thirty-eight percent (38%) of advisors highlighted ‘high potential returns’ as an attractive feature of crypto, up from 30% in last year’s survey … The biggest increase by far, however, was for ‘inflation hedging,’ which 25% of advisors highlighted as an attractive feature, up from just 9% in last year’s results. There has been a significant rise in interest in inflation-hedging tools over the past year, and a number of well-known institutional investors publicly highlighted bitcoin as a potential hedge against inflation risks in the past year.

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