Rick Schendel

So there’s lots of talk about the ETFs bringing in assets which buy up #Bitcoin & raise the price. There’s something much more interesting. The financial advisors. There are over 620,000 SEC/ FINRA licensed investment professionals (I’m one of them!) in the US, thousands of broker dealers and there are over 15,000 Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). How much money do these groups manage? Almost all of it. Trillions of dollars. Yeah yeah, we all know it’s deca millions of clients and lots of assets already. But here’s the neat thing — these thousands of family office managers, brokers, financial advisors and RIAs are mostly not involved in Bitcoin or well versed on it. But they will be. Things will change radically for several reasons: - financial advisors follow the money and follow the trends - advisors are smart about money / motivated to learn - they need to keep up with what customers & the public is talking about - there is pent up professional desire by advisors who like Bitcoin or are bit-curious but who can’t justify the time to focus on it due to focus on products they are allowed to offer & make a living from - they like to make money and do well for clients - they believe in well balanced /blended portfolios & the best advisors adjust for risk / hedge. Based on its performance & correlation with markets over the last decade, Bitcoin belongs in many more portfolios - speaking of which, thousands of financial planning & asset allocation software products will add the Bitcoin ETFs so advisors can do analysis & add it to hypothetical and real portfolios Here’s an even bigger one: These big investment firms will spend billions marketing these Bitcoin based investments to their clients! You think these companies are going to sit here hoping to win in assets after all this work? Nah. They are going to do what Wall Street does better than anyone: they are going to SELL these investments. They will have Chief Economists and experts and CEOs talking about this. They will have the best ads we’ve ever seen. The most sophisticated and well presented narratives. They will spend millions educating the public about why this makes sense as part of their portfolio. The investment companies even hire what are known as wholesalers - these are like super salespeople who sell to the salesforce — they travel office to office with a blank check food & beverage budget meeting brokers, buying lunches and telling the brokers & financial advisors why they should put clients in this product. The wholesalers know the topic cold and are available to help on the high end sales. They also provide brokers with financial support, advertising materials, already compliance approved PPTs & mailers and educational materials. Yes, the financial advisors will get up to speed on Bitcoin. They will have no choice. And here’s where it gets exciting: as all these thousands of financial advisors learn about Bitcoin what will happen? Many will get it. They will see Ross Stephens and Saifedean and Saylor videos, they will read the books, they will follow crypto Twitter and go to conferences. They will get the narrative. Some will become true believers. The next great supporters and proponents of Bitcoin don’t even believe in it yet. In 10 years some billionaire may be saying “Man, I was late. I was at a big bank and not allowed to touch it until the EFT so I didn’t learn about it much until 2024…” The reason this all can work like this is because Bitcoin is better money. It makes sense today, in these times. There’s a lot of stupid things about the ETF and investors should buy Bitcoin direct and have control of keys whenever possible. There will be drawbacks of the ETFs and that’s a topic for another post. Wall St and an army of high caliber financial professionals are here. I welcome my old colleagues from Wall St to meet my old friends in Bitcoin. Old friends and new. Buckle in. We are in for a ride. 🚀