Bitcoin No Longer Excites Financial Advisers, Says Bitwise CIO — What 40 Advisor Meetings Revealed

Key Takeaways

• Financial advisers remain bullish on crypto, but not Bitcoin specifically.

• Stablecoins and tokenization are now the biggest areas of interest.

• The next bull market could be driven by new investors with different interests.

Financial advisers remain interested in crypto despite the recent market downturn, but their attention has increasingly shifted away from Bitcoin, according to Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan.

The findings come as crypto markets search for the next catalyst after a period of Bitcoin price weakness that has left investors debating what could drive the industry’s next major growth cycle.

What Bitwise’s CIO Learned From 40 Financial Advisers

In a June 10 report, Hougan said he conducted 8 sales calls with financial advisers in a single day, the most he has completed in a single day since joining Bitwise 8 years ago.

Because many meetings involved advisory teams, he spoke with more than 40 advisers in total.

His first takeaway was that professional investors have not lost interest in crypto despite recent market volatility.

“The fact that they remain interested despite the pullback is good news,” Hougan said.

However, advisers appeared far more interested in the practical applications of blockchain technology than in Bitcoin itself.

“Their eyes are on stablecoins and tokenization more than Bitcoin,” Hougan wrote.

According to Hougan, discussions repeatedly shifted toward blockchain-based payment systems and other real-world applications that could reshape traditional financial markets.

“It was pretty hard to engage with advisors on Bitcoin this week,” he said.

“In call after call, they expressed much more curiosity over the real-world applications of crypto that are quickly reshaping everything from capital markets to global payments.”

Hougan attributed the shift partly to changing market narratives and how “stablecoins and tokenization have taken center stage.”

He noted that investors are increasingly hearing discussions from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon about the growth of tokenization.

“Investors want to be a part of that,” Hougan said.

What Fuels The Next Bull Market and Bitcoin Price Surge?

While Bitcoin has historically led crypto recoveries, Hougan believes a different set of catalysts could drive the next bull market.

“Throughout crypto’s history, new bull market cycles have relied on a combination of new product breakthroughs and new types of investors,” he wrote.

Hougan pointed to Ethereum’s emergence after the 2014 downturn and the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds following the 2022 collapse of FTX.

“The uptake of new products is an obvious potential catalyst, with stablecoins, tokenization, perpetual futures, and other real-world applications of crypto starting to take off,” Hougan said.

But technological innovation alone may not be enough.

“For real escape velocity, we need mass adoption by a new investor class,” he wrote.

Adding: “The best hope in my view is financial advisors and institutional investors.”

Hougan suggested that if advisers become a significant source of new capital in the next cycle, investments could flow first into blockchain networks rather than directly into Bitcoin.

Assets discussed during his adviser meetings included Ethereum, Solana, Chainlink, Avalanche, and Canton.

The broader takeaway, Hougan said, is that financial advisers now have a far more sophisticated understanding of crypto than they did only a few years ago.

“It might also be the thing that leads us into the next bull market,” he said.

Matt Hougan’s $1M Bitcoin Price Call

In March, Hougan argued Bitcoin’s price could eventually reach $1 million per coin if it captures a larger share of the global store-of-value market.

In a separate investor memo, the Bitwise executive said Bitcoin should primarily be viewed as a digital store-of-value asset competing with gold rather than as a payment network.

According to Bitwise estimates, the global store-of-value market is currently worth nearly $38 trillion, consisting of approximately $36 trillion in gold and about $1.4 trillion in Bitcoin.

At present, Bitcoin accounts for less than 4% of the total market.

Currently, Bitcoin would need to capture more than half of the global store-of-value market to reach $1 million per coin — a scenario Hougan acknowledged would be challenging.

However, he argued that many investors overlook the possibility that the market itself could expand significantly over time.

Around the launch of the first US gold exchange-traded fund in 2004, the total gold market was valued at roughly $2.5 trillion.

That figure has since grown to nearly $40 trillion, representing an annualized growth rate of approximately 13%.

If the broader store-of-value market continues expanding at a similar pace, Hougan estimated it could reach roughly $121 trillion within the next decade.

Under that scenario, Bitcoin would only need to capture about 17% of the market to reach a valuation of $1 million per coin.

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