This is the first episode of the revamped Crypto Office Hours with Tyrone Ross and Jay Coulter.
Office Hours are hosted by Jay Coulter and recorded LIVE on all FinancialAdvisor.TV social media properties.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/finadvisortv
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financialadvisortv
Transcript:
00:00
Welcome to Crypto Office Hours with Tyrone Ross, exclusively on financial advisor television. This show is for you, the financial advisor, we're going to broadcast live on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn to give you the advisor an opportunity to ask questions that you might have around the areas of crypto and your practice. So if you'd like to add to the conversation or ask questions,
00:29
whichever platform you're watching on, you can simply go into the comment section, type your question and I'll be able to pose it to Tyrone. We used to do a fairly regular quarter. It was usually quarterly Tyrone update on crypto when crypto when Bitcoin was 9,000. That's how long ago was we've been doing it. This year to date, it's already up very big. And
00:56
It has some ramifications for financial advisors and for their clients. Let's start with this question. How should advisors be looking at the recent surge in the price of Bitcoin? So before I answer that question, definitely want to say yes. I'm grateful to you for this opportunity. Again, we started doing these a long time ago. I think the last one we actually did. I was quarantining in a hotel because I had COVID. So.
01:22
It's been that long, but it's been a wonderful journey and grateful for you always being so supportive of this mission and what I'm trying to do here. So how should advisors be looking at Bitcoin now? I think one of the things that has happened over the last couple of months, and probably let's just go back a year or so, the environment, the environments, plural there, in which Bitcoin has been tested.
01:52
I think it's something that advisors should be paying attention to if they haven't already started to look at how to make allocations on behalf of clients. Why do you say that? I say that because one of the things that I've always heard from advisors is there's no track record. There's no way of determining how it will operate in different market environments. Well, here we are. Right. We had so many things that Bitcoin has had to endure and has come out on the other end of it.
02:19
very well, I think, right? Especially if you look at it, how much is appreciated this year and even 16 plus percent since the Coinbase news. To put a ribbon on that, it simply means this, I think what advisors should be doing, I always say this, educating, learning how best to implement it in their practice. There's plenty of vehicles now, plenty of ways to get exposure. I'm sure we'll talk about one that is on the horizon here, but I think at this point,
02:45
based on what advisors have seen from the largest institutions that have gotten in and stayed in, that if there is an asset that you have the most regulatory clarity on that you can get the most liquid and compliant and regulatory exposure to, it is Bitcoin. So I think it's time to at least starting to have the client conversations and then start to figure out if at all it has a place in client portfolios for your practice. You're so consistent. We started doing these shows three, four years ago
03:14
it, we actually started the Bitcoin series because I had advisors coming to me asking about it, and I didn't understand it. And I sought you out and you agreed to do these regular interviews. And I actually allocated to Bitcoin below 10,000 because of that. And your messaging has stayed the same on that Tyrone. But but but the industry has changed so rapidly. And right now we're talking about spot Bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock and other institutions being filed here recently. What's your take on the spot Bitcoin ETF space today?
03:45
My opinions on an ETF overall are well known, so I won't go into that. I don't think we need it. I think it's egregious. It's going to, there's nothing but to print dollars for the people that already have a lot of dollars like BlackRock. And for all of this, it's a gateway for retail and so on and so forth. You know, it's a better option than the Bitcoin, spot Bitcoin ETF cash app. So I get it.
04:10
You get an ETF, it's good for the market. Folks can short it as to liquidity and all these other things. But what is it that BlackRock is after? They're after assets, right? So if we're truly talking about a technology here that was meant to help people get exposure, that's where you lose me. But I think what it does, and I've softened on this thanks to Matt Hogan, because we've been on many a panel debating and arguing this.
04:39
I do think for financial advisors, it provides a couple of things. An easy button, right? The ability to just give a client access across all different accounts, across our entire book of business or firm and be able to rebalance and get statements and all those other things. I completely understand that. So I think that makes sense. I think what it also means is that it's a signal, right? When you have BlackRock and Fidelity and...
05:09
Schwab now involved, it's a signal, not Schwab, not necessarily for an ETF, but just involved in providing infrastructure. All of these larger firms that are providing infrastructure is a signal to wealth managers, advisors, asset managers, so on and so forth, that it's developing into what would be an asset class. If you didn't believe that before, I think you believe it now. And I think a spot ETF is going to provide that.
05:36
backstop, if you will, to make that argument because I think the flows are just going to be absurd. I would be happier if the ETF gets approved by whoever. I've been saying for a long time, it'll be heresy if Matt Hogan, right, the godfather of ETFs doesn't get the approval first. But listen, BlackRock is 574 and one in terms of getting ETFs approved. And then you have the SEC who is white, 100 and O.
06:05
in terms of approving these things are all for 100. They haven't approved one. So we'll see, someone has to lose here. But I will say this, if they were to get approved and there was somewhere where the SEC was hangin' and wranglin' about all these things, it said, all right, X percentage of the foes to go in here, those dollars that come into this fund, X amount has to go to providing financial education in rural and urban communities. I'd be all for an ETF, any ETF. But I know that's not gonna happen.
06:36
Um, but with that said, I think yes, will it be good for the space short? It's the easy button. Will it give more folks access? Yes. But for me, I hate a Bitcoin ETF. Don't think we need it. I will always stand on that. There's better ways to get exposure and there's there will be better ways for advisors to get exposure soon. They just need to stand pat. We'll talk about one soon. I'm curious how they would actually determine what the spot price is in the bit for Bitcoin on a daily basis. Do you have any idea how they do that? Well,
07:05
That's a great question. And I would love, you know, as we start to do these more, to get your perspective as well, right? Because again, I make no mistake about it. I'm a punch drunk crypto hippie, but I also have common sense thanks to the parents that I chose. But it would be good to get your perspective as well because 99.9% of advisors don't think like me or, you know, my partner, Eric Smith, or whoever else, right? We're just way down the rabbit hole. But here's the thing.
07:36
If financial advisors are going to get access to this, right? Again, I always talk about the education. I always talk about all the different things that needs to happen. I think what needs to happen is there needs to be an understanding that whether it's an ETF, whether it's any type of exposure or whatever, this is going to take time to draw out. Advisors are slow, slow as to move to this space. And because of that,
08:05
I think one of the things here that for me, again, if and when it is approved, how this happens, whatever the case may be, in that filing, same thing with Coinbase, if you look at what the SEC said, we're not comfortable with the market structure right now. They just have to get comfortable with that. I've been lucky enough to have some conversations behind closed door meetings with the SEC and
08:32
Senator Cory Booker and other folks about this. Their concern is, well, nothing's regulated. It's just, right? Whether that's true or not or whatever, we won't debate that here. But if you look at what they've always said in any of these filings, if you look at when Fidelity got denied, all of them actually, they said, look, the exchanges are not regulated. Hester Peirce believes that that shouldn't matter, right? We don't require that of anyone else, but Gensler has hell been on. We want...
09:01
oversight into what is going on at these exchanges. Where I do agree with him, a few things, where I agree with him is, right, Coinbase is an exchange, a broker, a custodian, a hairdresser, a dog walker, a pastor, a preacher, everything, right? You got to separate some of that. That's their concern. Co-mingling of assets, all these other things that are major concerns for them. So infidelity's filing when they got denied and gendered, and fidelity, let's not talk about anyone else. They
09:30
with their legacy brand and qualified custody and everything else. There's nothing here that shows us you're doing enough to protect investors. Right. So I think if black rock files and then they deny it and they say, all right, these are the reasons why we denied it. And those things are taken care of. Right. And there's, there's all this information on Twitter now about the surveillance agreements between the exchanges or whatever. It's nothing new there. All the filings have had them, but I think.
10:00
Until that gets resolved, any type of infrastructure, whether ETF or not, they have to get comfortable with there being transfer agents and ATSs that they're comfortable with and broker dealers, registering broker dealers and qualified custodians. We've made progress on that, so we'll see what happens. I mean, in their filing, they're saying they're using Coinbase as a custodian right after the SEC sues them. So-
10:24
We'll see what happens in the filing, but I think anything, whether it's an ETF or whatever it is, that the infrastructure still needs to be laid so that advisors are comfortable that it's compliant. Let's pivot to Fidelity and what they're doing in the crypto space. So for the novice, could you lay out exactly what the Fidelity digital assets offering it is, and then some of the recent news that's come out and why it matters to advisors? Yeah, so first of all,
10:49
Shout out to Steve Capone and the whole Fidelity Digital Assets team. I just did a webinar with them. It was a great turnout. I did a webinar there and everyone knows that follows me. I absolutely love Sprinkles cupcakes and they sent me some cupcakes. So shout to Fidelity Digital Assets. I appreciate you. So I want to be sensitive with this here because I did talk to Steve yesterday and there's been a lot of news of Fidelity doing all types of crazy things. But as far as this is concerned, which I think is bigger than an ETF,
11:19
And it's not going to get as much press. And I think folks just don't understand. I forget what day it was. It was last week. It was shared with me a brochure and I kind of, but actually let's do this. Let's go back three months ago, three months ago. If you look at my LinkedIn, there's a post when the news came out that fidelity had made retail, the retail offering available. Folks were able to go and buy Bitcoin and Ether fidelity. I had a post three months ago, but I also have another one three years ago.
11:49
But let's stay most recent, three years ago saying, hey everybody, you know what comes next. You just knew at some point they were gonna turn this on for advisors, it was just the next shoe to drop. And I thought that was gonna be monumental, great. Shortly after that, they reach out to me about this webinar and we were, you know, it was just, they're rolling out some research and wanted to bring me on for this webinar series that I, you know, myself and Rick Edelman, a few other folks have been on. And in that initial call, I said, hey,
12:20
I know you saw my post because they were intimating about some of the things that we're going to discuss. And I'm like, you know, it's funny if you were in the space and you building in the space for advisors, you just knew that this was coming and it's monumental. And they were like, yeah, you know, so I say that to say before I get into that, that this isn't officially live yet. They're testing it. It's going to be rolled out to a limited a bunch of folks. But if you know anything about.
12:49
Fidelity right advisors to custody with fidelity are very familiar with well scape Right and in well scape you get access to a whole ecosystem of partners and in third-party folks that part of the fidelity ecosystem that you could use One of the things that I've been saying for the last eight years eight When an advisor can sit down at their workstation login to fidelity schwa
13:19
Merrill, Morningstar, whatever, and open an account for a client right there that is linked to a qualified custodian where that client could then bill, model portfolios, rebalance, do all of these things. It is game over, right? So much so that I was hell bent on helping build that technology and access to be able to do that. I just knew that that was the thing.
13:48
every because the space was built for retail, it wasn't built for advisors. So now it's very easy for retail and the clients of advisors to open accounts. Difficult for financial advisors. Now there's been more access to that, but there's, it takes some one, two, if you will, but if I custody with fidelity and then I have access to Wells gate, they're allowing you to do all of that, right? So they're allowing you to open an account, have qualified custody.
14:18
Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are the two that look at that, regulatory clarity, performance reporting, research, education, all right there. That is monumental and way more impactful than an ETF in my opinion, one, because who knows who gets approved with the ETF, but Fidelity is giving advisors everything. I always use this example. I use it with investors. I use it with a prospective.
14:46
Uh, clients, employees, everything. What a financial advisor doesn't want to do. And you know, this advisors pay a lot of money for their tech. I don't want to pay $2 million for a condo and go across the street to use the bathroom. That doesn't make any sense. Right. I want it all here. I don't want to leave my workflow. I don't want to go and have to do this and then see if it comes back and then the links break and the data is incomplete and the client is pissed off. I don't want to do that.
15:15
What I want to do is have it all right here. I want to log into Orion. I want to log into Adapar. I want to go into, you know, Fidelity, be able to go into Wellscape, be able to get whatever I need. I want to be able to go into Workstation, whatever it is, and it just be easy. That's why, again, an ETF would be that. But in this case, when you get it all, and you're getting it from a trusted brand, again, that advisors trust and know, and never question.
15:45
And I even said this to Hester, what's interesting is, if you're going to use some of the crypto-qualified custodians that are out there, there's a very high bar. But an advisor will start an REA tomorrow and won't even think twice about Fidelity or Schwab. Just, I'm signing up with them, or Pershing, it's just, they're just there. But you're required to do so much due diligence on the other side. So to me, it's not gonna get depressed, but that is massive.
16:14
like incredibly massive. And when I got that DM last weekend, that advisor and then some of the other folks that had had had gotten to were incredibly excited for that reason, because it's going to give them peace of mind. And thus you have the ability to explode, to expose rather your clients to it, which I think is huge. So help the novices understand. So we've got a custodial relationship with Fidelity. We wanna add.
16:44
crypto services to what we offer our clients? Does the advisor see that inside of their wealth scape? And is are those digital assets then on the statements that the clients receive all in one month?
16:58
And this is again, based on what I saw, I don't imagine how it would work any other way. That's why it's so monumental. And that's the thing. What you just said, everything you just asked, ask any advisor that is in the space right now working with crypto assets, that's not the, either it doesn't exist or if you do have it, it's not great. There's a lot of manual processes there. But if you can go right into Wellscape and all of that is done for you, oh man, along with custody of fidelity.
17:24
any questions you would have in regards to this new safeguarding rule, which is by the way, a doozy, are solved. Again, an ETF doesn't solve that, especially if the custodian is Coinbase. Yeah. I want to get into that safeguarding rule because I'm not familiar with it, and I bet a lot of viewers aren't. But first, is it going back to Wealthscape and having this integration, can the advisor then go and apply their management fee on those crypto assets? The actual nuance of that
17:52
like that there's a lot more that has to be released there. I'll leave that up to them to say, but if I'm trying to figure it out, I don't see why not. That's what makes it so brilliant to me because if it's all there, I can blend the feet. It's all the assets right there, stick it next to the traditional things, wrap your feet on top, done, set it and forget it. Yeah.
18:16
I'd imagine that would be a key feature in one of the questions advisors would ask, but I can't imagine you wouldn't be able to do that. But I'm sure they'll have more information soon. Tell us about that new rule. I'm not familiar with it. So they label it as this self safeguarding rule, but it's basically a new custody rule for financial advisors. 100 plus pages that I've actually sat and went through a lot of it, especially because
18:41
At 401, we don't have a crypto offering yet and we're trying to get there, but we're trying to, we're going to skip over the centralized entities. It's just, it's a, it's a minefield. Now we're just going to go on chain doing everything on chain. So I was looking for an avenue there where moving on chain and doing model portfolios and everything on chain makes sense. We found that we're working towards that slowly. So really excited about that. But the gist of the new rule is basically the SEC.
19:12
wants to update the custody rule based on a lot of the things that are happening now, especially as it pertains to crypto assets. So there's a couple of things there that matter, right? Discretion now would be explicitly, as they say, determined to be having custody over a client's assets, if you have discretion. Some of the other things that are in there is the relationship with the custodian. They want you to be intimately involved in what the custodian is doing.
19:41
an agreement with the custodian that they're promising you that they're segregating assets, that there's procedures put in place, that the clients are safe. So they're putting a lot of onus on the advisors and the custodian in terms of what that relationship looks like. They want that to be very much closer. They want it to be clear. They want it to be an agreement. They're also, which is interesting here is what they want is the advisor out of the statement process. Go back to what you just said.
20:09
The advisors, some advisor have had to generate statements for clients. They don't want that. They want a statement to go directly to the client from the custodian. They want the advisors out of it. And then if the advisor, right. And this is something that we're working on now. If the advisor also gets that. That's great. Notice filing all these other things, Mr. and Mrs. Client, your assets are held at Coinbase. They are segregated. They are held in code stores. They are the dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Here's your account number with all these things that it's in. There's a lot.
20:39
baked in there. So that new custody rule, which a lot of folks have submitted comments for, hopefully, impacts again. And they're basically saying any and all assets need a qualified custodian now. That's the other thing that's a change. And the discretion one is big for any advisor, right? Because you get in the standard letters of agreement and everything else in there. There's a lot of nuance that I think advisors should check out, if not ask your compliance officer or
21:09
that have any interest in working in crypto, Gensler has used that as his way to regulate the space, make it really hard on advisors, make it really hard on the custodians to kill it, right? The issue with that is who does that hurt? It ultimately crushes the smaller advisors because just everything you would have to do, the price, if you're starting to be, you know,
21:36
somewhat of a vanguard here and push into doing crypto because you have younger clients and you think this is a way to grow your business, it's going to be very expensive to comply. That's tough. And then ultimately retail gets hurt here as well because those folks that I think they're still a what, a hundred plus million accounts at Coinbase. If those folks either are attached to advisor or want an advisor, they're making it difficult for the advisor to work with the end retail clients. So retail gets hurt in the end. I believe the SEC.
22:05
um, mission is to protect, uh, the individual investors. So, um, those actions are draconian to say the least, but I think if advisors pay attention to them, particularly as it pertains to their business model as well, if you are an AUM advisor, if you are using SMAs, all that is in there, they break all of that down before we get off this. I want to say this though, one of the reasons with all of this regulatory clarity and things we can get into.
22:34
One of the things I've always said, there was never anything that was obtuse about what they felt RIA should be doing. If you go back to February of 21, I believe, and then December of 20, they gave guidance on broker dealers. If you wanna be a broker dealer, this is the bar, incredibly high. That's why you've seen no things there. And in February of 21, I believe,
23:00
They put out a risk alert for RAAs, right? I tell advisors all the time, go print that out, stick it on the fridge, right? That's what they want you to follow. So there was always clarity there as far as, hey, this is what we think of Bitcoin and Ethereum. This is what you should be doing in terms of billing and record keeping and qualified custody and all these other things. And then they just bolted on, right? To trifecta with now this new safeguarding of custody rule with that. So.
23:27
advisors had guidance so far as the eye can see if you wanted to be in the space, especially if you were just doing Bitcoin in theory. But if you started to move out right on the curve there, it was a higher bar, but there were clarity there. Now hybrid, independent broker dealer, wirehouse, completely, completely different. But for our days, there were some clarity there and still is. Let's go deeper on our A's. So I work with some aggregators that have, you know, 25
23:57
3040 advisors under their umbrella, they have not dipped into the digital asset space yet. But it's something that needs to be on their radar. If you were me as a consultant talk speaking with an aggregator with that type of framework of having you know, 20 to 40 advisors, how do you introduce the concept to the firm? And what do they need to be thinking about? Oh, man, there's some big news coming that I wish I could mention right now, which will help the aggregators and this person. Hang on.
24:26
Give it another month or so. But so I think there's a couple of things here, right? Let's use some traditional examples. 20 to 30%, right? Some studies show of in a traditional relationship, 20, 30% of a client's assets are held away from a financial advisor. Go back to what I just said before. This is a space that was built for retail.
24:56
So I think there was another study to show 90 plus percent of all crypto wealth is held outside of the purview of wealth managers. So you put those things together in the pot, right? You go, okay, held away, not locked away, right? Shout out to Michael Kitsy, who I think coined that, held away, not locked away. So what an aggregator does is we all know, right? You aggregate data, you aggregate accounts, right? You aggregate information.
25:25
What the aggregators have the ability to do now is pull that data in. So now the advisor is just seeing it, having a conversation around it and really start to introduce it to the client. So there's no, I'm not asking for public and private keys. I'm not asking the client to do anything. I'm not suggesting a 7% allocation to Bitcoin. I'm not doing any of that. So I think the aggregators in our space have a unique opportunity here, especially now, right?
25:55
There's a compliance angle to this as well, which I'll get into. But especially now where the aggregators have a unique opportunity to go grab that information, right? Bring that back into the platforms that advisors use and just go, look, you thought you had a $2 million account client, this client is three and a half million dollars. Now the advisor goes, Hmm, I would love to get paid on a three and a half million dollar account in a $2 million account. Right? So that's incredibly important.
26:23
The compliance angle to this is again for the, for the aggregators and the folks out there is this given example. And this is a real life example that was given to Eric and I, when we have a meeting with our counselor, we were going through our ADV, we were updating our ADV and he goes, Hey, you guys own Coinbase at all, or any of these things that you're talking about? Yeah. Do you have clients who have Coinbase accounts? Yeah.
26:53
that's an outside business activity. What? What do you mean? Right, so he explained to us, if you're helping with a client and you know that that client has Coinbase and you as a firm hold Coinbase, let's just say a firm, forget just the two of us, but imagine a hundred billion dollar RIA or a 50 billion dollar RIA has a sizable position in this where there are advisors in that firm that are allocating to this and then helping clients, that has to be.
27:21
listed as an outside business activity because you materially benefit from the price of the stock going up and so on and so forth. So you have to list that. So imagine being able to aggregate all of that outside information that clients have and then internally, hey, the data shows again, shout to my Bitwise family, right? Advisors, every time they do this study, the advisors are more active holding crypto than they have clients that
27:49
are holding crypto that they're active working with individuals with. So we know if we go in house, there are a lot of advisors who are closet crypto hippies come out of the closet, show us what you own. Right. That is important for compliance purposes, because we know that you have been having conversations with clients or helping clients open Coinbase accounts, whatever. I've been, I've been saying this for years, right? It boggles my mind. How many advisors.
28:16
have come to me and say, oh yeah, I helped the client open this Coinbase account. I helped the client open this account out. What are you doing? Right. And then turning around, if you are, again, Coinbase goes public, you buy a Coinbase, all of these different things, you can get into the whole GBTC, GBTC part of it as well. There's a lot here that I think the aggregators have an opportunity to just simply bring it in, see it, have conversations, you know, either internally or with the client.
28:46
held away the beautiful thing as well. If I pull that into an aggregator, right? And the aggregators have that similar to what you said before, which by the way, a by-product of this Wealthscape announcement in Access going nuclear will be now everyone is going to have to chase that rabbit because now everyone's gonna go, oh crap. You gotta find a way to put all those crypto assets next to the traditional assets, redo risk tolerance, redo billing, redo all those things, right?
29:16
That's gonna happen. So now the aggregators have a unique opportunity here because you gotta think about it. The product side is essentially solved. There's more, there's a lot of exposure for advisors to get access through products and crypto. The aggregators have a unique opportunity here to completely shoot the lights out because again, it's what's held away that advisors cannot see that they can't help clients with.
29:41
which is the huge opportunity here. And forget about whether it's layer one, layer two, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. Okay, so Mr. and Mrs. Client, you have 14,000 transactions here, right? Let's kind of reconcile this and see what type of damage there is, right? Are you reporting this? There's a estate planning things, there's financial planning things, and you don't even have to talk about crypto, but you just go, you know, Mr. Client, you have X amount of losses, you know, you can write these losses off, so on and so forth. So what...
30:09
The ability to bring it in now, it sits on advisor's lap and you say, all right, don't be a crypto hippie, be a financial planner. It's in your circle of competence. Now you're helping the client manage their financial life. You're not having to worry about which chain and what's gonna settle and all these other things. So anyway, I know that was a long answer, but I just think for whoever that person is and for the aggregators overall, if the aggregators miss this opportunity over the next six to 12 months, they'll never get it back because
30:38
there are people working on it, and there's gonna be a lot of connectivity there. But the products are there. And I think the shot across the bow, if you will, is that, again, once that's live, and all advisors, fidelity advisors, can go into Wellscape, it's night, night. Everyone is gonna have to chase that rabbit. So it's really gonna be a big deal. That's a great question. How far behind are Schwab, LPL, Pershing, some of the other bigger players in the custody space?
31:07
Do you know? Do you have any lens into how far along they might be? I do. So, well, Schwab, Fidelity, Virtu, Citadel, this past week announced EDX, right? Which is an exchange, but the cool thing about it is it's a non-custodial exchange, so they're not going to be custodying the assets, but they're working on adding custody and clearing soon, but they're just going to make a market, which is huge. So Schwab is there.
31:37
Schwab has been kind of, you know, there's been some announcements here with Schwab that folks have been ignoring. Pershing kind of the same thing, right? With their, the Bank of New York Mellon relationship, they announced custody, it's been slow to roll out. But even with that, a lot of folks in our space have really been yawning at Pershing X, now Woe, right? It's called. That's a big deal. That is a big deal. I know.
32:03
I get all the reasons why it shouldn't work, it's multi-custodial, it's purging.
32:10
Right. Oh yeah. Okay. You, you feel me. Oh yeah. I just think people are going to dismiss this at their own peril, but I digress. I would find it hard to believe their multi-custodial that they don't look across the street and go, not even cross street, the hallway. Oh, look at that. It's making New York melon there. And you guys mentioned something about custody for crypto assets. And then you start to see all these folks, Deutsche Bank,
32:38
NASDAQ and that, right? It's just happening. Why wouldn't that be a part of WoE? Why? It just tick, tick is coming, right? So I think they're there. They're just gonna, they're putting all of that together. And then again, I think look at Goldman and their ARIA custody business and the things they have. You don't think they're kind of cooking up something here at some point. They don't see what's going on. As you know, the custodians, that's a.
33:07
battle for assets, right? So Fidelity is there, Schwab is there, Pershing is there. Those are the big three as we know. And then you kind of later on from there, don't put anything past our good friend, Jason Wink. I've been in his ear for the last four years about crypto. So I know at some point he's tired of hearing my mouth and he is a valued and trusted turnkey investor. So shout to J-Dub.
33:38
Jason is Jason is Jason. You don't think he's thought about this, right? I mean, build your own self clearing and everything. You don't think he can't figure out a way to get crypto into altruists, you're nuts. So all the major players are going to have it. And again, I think once that happens again with Fidelity, it's just gonna, it's gonna, it's the domino effect. So they're all there and you're gonna start to see here a lot of news and announcements towards year end. You could book it.
34:08
Okay. Yeah, even more reason to keep doing these office hours. We're past the 30 minutes. But this is a really important question. Yeah, topic for advisors that are newer to the Bitcoin in crypto space. Saying that you said in our early days is you got to educate before you allocate. Do it. How do advisors who want to have a deep understanding before they jump in, go about educating themselves on crypto and how to best serve their clients? Phenomenal question.
34:38
Couple things, I would one, follow the folks that have been here before you, Matt Hogan, Adam Blumberg, Rick Edelman, follow Eric Smith on Twitter, follow these folks. Just get a feel for what those that have been in space building tools and resources for advisors.
35:06
Steve Larson is another one, not really active on Twitter, but Jackson Wood. Steve Larson, I would put in a room with anyone, anywhere to represent advisors as far as talking crypto. He's in my top three. I have my own 12 disciples of crypto advisors, but he's up there. Follow these folks, ask them questions, reach out. And I think what I realized is there are a bunch of advisors who were crypto curious, if you will, and reached out to me, had a conversation, and it kind of went on their own journey.
35:35
That's the first thing. I always recommend Crypto Assets, the book by Jack Tater and Chris Boninski, must read, must, must, must, must read. It's a really good one. The Bitcoin Standard by Safety Nam-Oost. And then there's a book, Defy and the Future of Money by Harvey Campbell and a few other folks. Read those books. And the other thing is there are plenty of resources out there for you to get.
36:05
Educated right again shout to Adam Bloomberg planner Dow Steve Larson what they're doing with the CDAA Phenomenal I usually in there they have a office hours like this every every Friday I hop in there and chop it up with the folks and we've you know Sponsor some folks to go through me and Adam has been at this for a really long time I think going back to 2017 18 so they just had a really awesome announcement with Morningstar you got
36:34
DAC FP and RICS certification. If you want to go that route, Josh Brown and a few other folks who just did his conference there, Morgan Richard. So they did a really good job. I've gone through all of these by the way, and RICS is great. NASDAQ, shout to my NASDAQ family, on the NASDAQ Advisor Academy. They have one which is awesome, Keith Black and Julie Cooling and all of the folks that were involved with that. That one's free.
37:00
It's really, really good. Again, going through that as well. You might see me at one of the modules there. And I think once you do that, the last part of that is to open an account.
37:14
You choose won't say where, but just see what that's like. I forget buying anything. Just see how easy it is for clients to open an account and just get access to this whole world. And then you'll start to understand the importance of no matter how you feel about it, yeah, your name, tulip bulbs, whatever you want to call it. Why you should be getting in front of your clients, having a conversation about this. Um,
37:41
And then if you're feeling frisky, buy $25 worth and see what happens. Might end up like you right buying at 9000. And here we are. That was the exact advice you gave me. And it worked out for sure. Appreciate your time here this morning. I'm looking forward to doing these going forward. If you're watching this in replay and you want to submit questions for our next episode, just DM me on whichever platform that you're watching this video. Tyrone, have a great weekend, my friend.
38:10
You do the same. Looking forward to this.