Superficially, it should be a perfect match. Interest in cryptocurrencies has surged among the young and tech literate, exactly the same demographic targeted by the big robo-advisors.
Yet even as the finance sector starts to embrace crypto, you won’t find bitcoin or ether in model advice portfolios. The dilemma for the industry is that registered investment advisor status is the foundation of its hard-won mainstream acceptance and conveys a legal duty to act in a client’s best interests.
As robo-advising becomes more popular—Schwab predicts assets managed by robo-advisors will grow to $460 billion next year—automated choices have come under far more scrutiny. While crypto’s big returns over the past year are tempting to any investor, extreme volatility and a relatively short track record point to substantial risk.
“When you plug cryptos into standard asset allocation models, you need to have a very high positive expected return in order to justify any holdings in the portfolio due to their risk,” said Jim Angel, a professor at Georgetown University. It’s “highly debatable” whether crypto belongs in an investor’s portfolio at all, he added.
Set on the other side is the opportunity. Survey after survey shows millennials—a generation just starting to gain investable assets yet often wary of the cost of traditional advice—are most likely to believe cryptocurrency is a legitimate asset class and indeed may already be buying Bitcoin.
The average U.S. crypto investor is a 38-year-old male with a household income of $110,000, according to a Gemini survey.
“The magnitude of how popular crypto has become is making people look at the space and wondering if this isn’t a way they can differentiate their platform,” said David Goldstone, manager of research and analytics at Backend Benchmarking. “They want to get them young and grow with them as the complexity of their financial picture grows,” he said, referring to clients.
So far none of the major players include crypto in model or automated portfolios, even if a couple like Canada’s Wealthsimple allow customers to trade crypto on the side. Still, pretty much everyone is looking at it.
California-based WealthFront, which has about $16 billion in discretionarily managed assets according to an estimate from Backend Benchmarking, is in the early stages of a exploring a crypto offering that would likely include the ability to invest in bitcoin and ether, spokesperson Elly Stolnitz said. It’s too early to disclose specifics or timings, she said.
Right now, WealthFront customers are asked about risk-tolerance levels with portfolios built based on their responses. If someone changes their investment mix from the recommendation they’re shown the effects on their risk score and implications for financial goals.