Salt Lake City-based AdvisorPeak this week announced that it was adding capabilities to custody, trade and rebalance digital assets like cryptocurrencies on its trading and rebalancing platform.

The new digital asset solutions, which AdvisorPeak claims are the first of their kind, are being implemented via a collaboration with alternative asset custodian Prime Trust.

“We’ve been talking with Prime Trust about doing something around digital assets for at least two, maybe four years,” said AdvisorPeak CEO Damon Deru. “What held us back previously was that there wasn’t the interest  level yet from advisors, until last year. Now we’re seeing signs that many advisors are looking for capabilities to be able to trade this because their clients are already invested.”

With the new capabilities advisors will be able to view and trade clients’ traditional, publicly held assets like stocks, bonds and cash-like instruments alongside bitcoin and other digital assets, real estate and private securities on a single platform, enabling a more thorough and complete view of a client household’s financial life.

The technology can also address the issue of client assets held away. Deru says that  many advisors now encounter clients who are buying, holding and trading cryptocurrencies in held-away accounts, adding a layer of opacity and complexity when trying to rebalance a client’s assets.

Deru’s view is supported by a recent Bitwise survey that found that over 80% of advisors received crypto-related questions from their clients in 2020 as assets like bitcoin and ethereum experienced rapid increases in their values.

“To be an advisor and say to them ‘let’s look at the whole picture but exclude your digital assets’ is doing a disservice to the client,” said Sean Ristau, executive vice president of account management solutions at Prime Trust. “We’re now seeing people looking for ways to get more yield and also diversify their exposure in the marketplace. Clients want their advisors to find solutions and offer something in digital assets. This partnership combines a custodian and an independent advisor platform to help meet that demand.”