Here’s Everything You Don’t Know About What’s Happening in Crypto
This is the info you need to answer client questions today
Ric Edelman: It's Tuesday, October 24th. Peter Schiff is the chief global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital. He predicted the 2008 financial crash and he's now predicting crypto extinction. You know, the death of bitcoin has been predicted 474 times since it was invented in 2009. That's 34 times a year, about once every ten days on average. Somebody declares that bitcoin is dead. By the way, if you want to see all 474 of those Bitcoin obituaries, 99 Bitcoin.com lists them all.
Well, I don't know that bitcoin is about to be extinct or dead. There are now 425 million people around the world who own crypto, including 52 million Americans. That's up from 40,000,000 two years ago. Think about this. Two years ago, bitcoin was $60,000 in price. Over the last two years, the price crashed, falling as low as $15,000. But instead of there being fewer people buying it and owning it, there are now more people buying it and owning it, 25% more than when bitcoin was at its all-time high. And so yeah, a 25% increase in the number of US adults who own bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto assets. And you still think your clients don't own crypto. You think none of your clients have any curiosity about crypto? You're delusional. Your head is in the sand. You're oblivious to what's really going on, and that means you're failing to be a value and service to your clients.
And if that's not enough, you're failing to build your own business because of your obstinance, your prejudice, your bias. You know, there was a report this year by the CFA Institute and FINRA Investor Education Foundation. That report says that more than half of Gen Z own crypto. We're talking the children of your clients, the inheritors of your clients wealth, and they have the ear of their parents. If your parents’ kids are telling them about crypto and you have nothing to say, or you merely poo-poo it or dismiss it, look at the damage you're doing to your own credibility.
And it's not just kids who own crypto anymore. A new report says 88,000 people have crypto assets that are worth at least $1 million. And you still think none of your clients own it? None are interested. None are even curious. Are you kidding me? Then explain how I've built an entire company focused on nothing but crypto education for the financial services industry. I've got 25 employees at DACFP, the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, and pretty much all we do is teach financial advisors about crypto. We teach legal and compliance personnel, investment committee analysts and portfolio managers, sales and marketing teams, and C-suite and board members about crypto. If nobody cares about this, then how could I be generating so much in fees that I can afford to employ a couple of dozen people? If nobody cares about crypto, how could I be hosting one of the most popular podcasts in the country? Yeah, this podcast, it's in the top 1% of all podcasts, according to Apple, out of 4 million podcasts in the country.
Let me put this in the context for you. Think about the incredible growth of the internet over the past couple of decades. Brevan Howard Asset Management says there's going to be a similar rate of growth for digital assets. They wrote, “We truly believe that this is a very disruptive technology and it can unlock value in many ways. And we are here to enable our institutional investors to find ways to get access to this space.”
They're not alone. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink says he's seeing client demand for crypto around the world. Blackrock clients across the globe are talking about what he says is, quote, the need for crypto. JP Morgan just completed its first blockchain-based collateral settlement transaction between Blackrock and Barclays Bank. JP Morgan’s Onyx blockchain and its tokenized collateral network were used by Blackrock to tokenize shares of one of its money market funds. The tokens were then transferred to Barclays as collateral for an over-the-counter derivatives trade. The whole thing took minutes instead of days. JP Morgan has also completed its first blockchain transaction for corporate clients in Europe, using its own token, the JPM coin. The transaction was conducted by Siemens, a big German conglomerate, in a euro-denominated payment.
At Citigroup, they're testing a new service that will let its institutional clients transfer tokenized deposits instantly anywhere in the world. It's the latest expansion of Citi's move into digital asset solutions. The company has a private blockchain and uses smart contracts to turn customer funds into digital tokens. The tokens can then be sent from one country to another instantly, 24/7 virtually free. Shamir Khaliq, the global head of services at Citigroup, says, “Digital asset technologies have the potential to upgrade the regulated financial system by applying new technologies to existing legal instruments and well-established regulatory frameworks.” Citigroup wrote a paper saying that the crypto industry is, quote, “Approaching an inflection point that would soon see billions of users and trillions of dollars in value.”
Ernst and Young has released its newest blockchain analyzer product. They call it reconciler, and the first customer to buy the product is Fidelity Digital Assets. Reconciler is a web-based analytics dashboard. It lets you query on chain data for risk management purposes. You can identify transaction inaccuracies, wallet address balances, digital signatures and coming next, address derivation, block explorers and staking all gobbledygook to you. Right. But somebody is paying attention because some of the biggest companies in the financial services industry are all over this. Reconciler also supports lots of blockchains bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and even Dogecoin.
And have you ever heard of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation? Of course you have. DTCC is the largest financial clearinghouse in the world, handling an astonishing $2.3 quadrillion worth of stock sales annually 2.3 quadrillion. In other words, take $1 billion and multiply that 2.3 million times. That's how big DTCC is. You know it. And guess what? They just bought a digital asset infrastructure firm so they can enter the blockchain space. They say that this acquisition will, “encourage adoption of digital assets”.
It's not just Wall Street firms in the financial services industry doing this. So are the credit card companies. Visa is now letting merchants send and receive money using the USDC stablecoin, and they're doing it on the Solana blockchain. Mastercard has released a suite of crypto offerings itself, and it just completed a CBDC project with the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center. The project tested how parties could hold, use and redeem CBDCs central bank digital currencies. Yeah, we're going to have a digital dollar, not just paper ones. The president of Mastercard's Australasia division said, “As the digital economy continues to mature, Mastercard has seen demand from consumers to participate in commerce across multiple blockchains. This technology not only has the potential to drive more consumer choice, but it also unlocks new opportunities for collaboration between the public and private networks to drive genuine impact in the digital currency space.”
You know, it's funny. My dad, once I remember down in the basement, he had a copy of the newspaper of the day, World War Two ended. He also had copies of the newspapers the day John Kennedy was shot. And the next couple of days after that. Do you got any old magazines or newspapers of important days in history lying around?
Well guess what? Cointelegraph is a media company, and they're now letting readers collect articles that they publish as NFTs, non-fungible tokens. You highlight the articles that you think are valuable, and you collect the industry's pivotal moments, and you're contributing to the community by doing this. A community-owned museum of the largest crypto media. You don't actually own the article any more than my dad owned. The article published by The New York Times. What you own is an official collectible. You can trade them with others creating a market for these items. And they're doing all this on the Polygon blockchain.
And how about Major League Baseball? You've been watching the playoffs as we head into the World Series for the playoffs and World Series this year. When you buy a ticket, if you go to one of the games, you get a free 2023 Major League Baseball postseason digital commemorative ticket, a digital version of your ticket. It's more than just a memento. It features the matchup, the ballpark, and even the final score.
Ferrari is now letting customers buy their cars using bitcoin, they said. The decision is in response to requests from customers and dealers. Rich people own bitcoin and they want to use it to buy their next Portofino.
Analysts at 21.Co have issued a report saying that tokenization specifically tokenized RWAs (Real World Assets) could be a $10 trillion market by the end of this decade, just six years away. Wait a minute. What are RWAs, real world assets? We're talking traditional asset classes. You know, the asset classes that you know that you already invest in stocks, bonds, real estate. All of these assets are becoming tokenized.
You know, we used to talk about digital assets. That's the name of my sister company, DACFP, the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. “Digital Assets” is a better, friendlier, less scary name than crypto. But you know what? I was just at the Goldman Sachs crypto conference in New York two weeks ago, and the speakers all made it clear there's a movement underway. We are going away from digital assets and toward assets being digitized. You think that's not a big deal? Indifference. What's the difference between a digital asset and an asset being digitized?
Well, bitcoin is a digital asset. It only exists on the internet. But think about your driver's license. That's a real document. You carry it around in your wallet or purse. But what if instead we created a digital version of your driver's license, an NFT, a non-fungible token, a unique item placed it on the blockchain, had it issued by the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles. It'd be legitimate. Your driver's license merely tokenized. Digitized. You can send it to anybody you want. You can show it to anybody you want, any time, instantly, securely, and for free.
Well, why stop there? I mean, we're already digitizing automobile titles. State of West Virginia is leading the way there, but now we can digitize any asset. Government bonds, stocks. Each share is its own NFT. With the deed to your house, we can tokenize all sorts of assets. And 21.co says in the best case scenario, it's going to be a $10 trillion market by the end of the decade. Worst case, it'll be a $3.5 trillion market. Right now, the market is just $116 billion. In other words, 21.co is projecting gains of 30x to 90x over the next six years. The growth of tokenization of US government bonds - four and a half x this year alone. They wrote, “The convergence between crypto and traditional asset classes, including fiat currencies, equities, government bonds and real estate is experiencing unprecedented growth.”
And they're not the only ones saying that. Bank of America says tokenization could transform the current financial infrastructure, increase efficiencies, reduce costs and optimize supply chains. Boston Consulting Group says the market for tokenized assets, forget about $10 trillion, BCG says it could hit $16 trillion.
So what are governments around the world saying about all this? Pretty much everyone is supporting all this development of blockchain and digital assets. At the G20 Summit, which was held recently, they're working on proposals to govern crypto. The proposals were submitted by the IMF and the FSB, the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board.
The European Union has already approved a comprehensive set of rules for the crypto markets, and the G20 wants to create similar rules for the rest of the world.
In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority has made permanent a digital sandbox. This is a structure that lets crypto firms test new products without fear that regulators will sue them. Instead, the companies work with the regulator to figure out not only how to make the products work, but how to figure out how the new products should be regulated and taxed. Companies sign up to participate, and this lets the regulator keep an eye on what's going on. The Financial Conduct Authority in Great Britain said, “The digital sandbox works to foster innovation and growth and is helping the industry launch new products, secure funding and partnerships, and even receive industry awards.”
Clearly, governments around the world get it. On November 1st, coming up soon, the European Central Bank is launching a two-year process to finalize its own rules for a Euro CBDC, a digital currency that will be applicable across Europe. ECB President Christine Lagarde said, “We need to prepare our currency for the future. We envision a digital euro as a digital form of cash that can be used for all digital payments, free of charge, and that meets the highest privacy standards. It would co-exist alongside physical cash, which will always be available, leaving no one behind.”
That's the kind of leadership we're seeing around the world. Meanwhile, we're not getting much here in the US. But we are getting it in Australia. They've announced new crypto regulation to protect Australians who own digital assets. Another example that we can just forget about risk of crypto being banned, instead, it's all about protection.
In Australia, crypto operators have to obtain a financial services license and the Reserve Bank of Australia, that's their version of the fed, says it is, “open minded as to the functional forms of digital money and supporting infrastructure that could best support the Australian economy in the future.” They're going to issue a report on their research into a CBDC next summer. They noted that 15% of Australian banking is still being conducted the same way it was 25 years ago. And they asked, “Is this the best we can do?”
Australia wants to catch up to the European Union, which already has a major crypto law in place, and the Bank for International Settlements, BIS, is an organization of the world's central banks, they've announced an initiative to find blockchain based solutions for sustainable finance. The initiative is being led by the United Arab Emirates, and the goal is to find new ways to combat - Are you ready for this - climate change? Blockchain technology can help those combating climate change with auditing and improving transparency, traceability, accountability and sustainable finance.
France is in on this too. They've launched a training module for crypto influencers, requiring them to get certified with the government. If you want to recommend crypto to people in France, you're going to need to pass a 25-question quiz to get the Responsible Influence Certificate in Financial Advertising.
But like I said, here in the US, we are falling behind. There's very little progress. Oh there's some. For example, the FASB, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, is issuing accounting rules for crypto to help US companies with their record keeping. It's the first time we've had an accounting rule specifically for crypto. The rule says that companies have to list their holdings at current prices. They can't use the price they paid or some other outdated price. This is great news. It's a huge leap forward that will make it easier for US companies to hold bitcoin as a treasury asset, alongside T-bills.
And to make the point, MicroStrategy just invested another $147 million into bitcoin. The company now owns 158,000 bitcoins. It's invested nearly $5 billion into bitcoin over the last three years. The chairman of the company, Michael Saylor, says there's no reason for a company to put its cash reserves into cash or even into T-bills, because inflation is so high that it erodes the value of the cash. At 5% inflation, a dollar is only worth $0.95 one year later. So you put the money into bitcoin instead. It gives the company a hedge against inflation.
And the new FASB rules are letting MicroStrategy do this without having to take accounting charges merely because the price of bitcoin fluctuates.
There's also movement over at the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Commissioner Caroline Pham, has proposed a new pilot program to regulate crypto. The goal is to create rules that she says will ensure the integrity of the US capital markets by providing impartial access, improved liquidity, new competition, that will reduce conflicts and risks and prevent fraud, abusive practices and manipulation. The fact that the CFTC is moving forward with new rulemaking like this is really important, because a big question we all have here in the US is very simple. Who regulates crypto?
Congress is trying to answer that question right now. Should the chief regulator of crypto be the SEC or should it be the CFTC? The Chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, says there are no new regulations needed. On the other hand, the CFTC is busy figuring out what those new regulations ought to be. The CFTC already has a digital asset markets subcommittee, and they're proposing a regulatory framework for digital assets. So who do you think ought to get the job? The CFTC that regulates the crypto is a brand new technology that needs brand new rules. Or the SEC, which says that the existing rules that were written back in the 1930 are good enough. The answer seems pretty clear to me.
And while Congress dickers over this, states are moving ahead. New York already has something they call the. BitLicense crypto companies have to get one in order to do business in New York. And California has just signed a new law that takes effect in July of 2025 that basically has the same requirement. The States are clearly not waiting any longer for Congress to act.
And what about all the criticisms of crypto? You know, like bitcoin is bad for the planet. These objections are quickly falling to the wayside because the crypto community has made big improvements. Take Ethereum, for example, the second largest digital asset by market cap. It's got 40% of the market, and it moved away from proof of work, which consumes a lot of energy. You know, the bitcoin is bad for the planet riff. They moved away from that to proof-of-stake, which is 99.9% more energy efficient.
And bitcoin miners, which are still using a lot of energy, are becoming eco-friendly. For example, BitGrow, which is a really big bitcoin miner, has just combined bitcoin mining with sustainable agriculture. The company is taking the heat that its bitcoin mining operations produce to power hydroponic systems. That's a farming method that doesn't require soil. It's efficient and sustainable and it cultivates fresh produce year round. So instead of letting excess heat get into the atmosphere, BitGrow is reducing its carbon footprint while boosting crop yields.
And what about the criticism that terrorists are using crypto to finance their activities? This has come up lately due to the Israel-Hamas War. Two senators, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Roger Marshall (R-KS), recently wrote an Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. They did this just last week. They were complaining that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have collected $130 million in crypto over the past two years. They also say that Iran generates $1 billion in crypto assets every year, and that half of North Korea's missile program has been funded by crypto crime. They also say that 90% of the fentanyl made in China is financed by drug cartels using crypto.
Is all that true? Well, a couple of days after Elizabeth Warren wrote her Op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal published another Op-ed. This one was from J.W. Verret. He's an associate law professor at George Mason University, a former senior counsel of the House Financial Services Committee, and now a board member of the Zcash Foundation. The title of Verret's Op-ed: “Crypto and Hamas. Why Elizabeth Warren is wrong”. He notes that Elizabeth Warren and Roger Marshall used the horrific October 7th attack against Israel as an opportunity to advance their legislative agenda. And their effort, he said, is misguided. There's no evidence, he wrote, “that crypto is used more often or more effectively than the traditional banking system is used to finance terrorism”. In fact, crypto transactions are all easily tracked because blockchains are public. Every crypto transaction can be seen by anyone in the world.
And in fact, Hamas stopped soliciting crypto donations precisely because they were so easy to trace. And within days of the Hamas attack, Israel froze 100 crypto accounts to stop funding for Hamas. Professor Verret’s Op-ed says that the Warren legislation is wrongheaded, and instead of protecting the US, it would actually help our enemies around the world.
My view? I find it unfortunate that Elizabeth Warren chose to use the recent terrorist attacks against Israel to promote her crypto agenda. But there is one good thing that Elizabeth Warren has done recently in the world of crypto. She joined a bunch of other senators in sending a letter to the IRS, telling it to hurry up with issuing crypto tax rules. I mean, yeah, sure, we know that buying and selling bitcoin is taxwise like buying and selling a stock. But what about bitcoin mining airdrops, hard forks, soft forks, staking lending, borrowing? All of these are new innovations from a new technology and the Internal Revenue Code never contemplated any of this. So we need new tax rules. The letter that the senators sent to the IRS said, “Limiting any further delay would provide clarity to law abiding taxpayers and generate billions in tax revenue.” The Treasury Department has been working on this for two years already. Get on with it.
Yeah, in the world of crypto, there's a lot that Washington needs to get on with.
Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, wants to hold hearings so he can ask SEC Chair Gary Gensler why he has not been engaging with the digital assets industry. Senator Hagerty is accusing Gary Gensler of stomping on crypto innovation. At a speech last month, he said, “It's a terrible environment for those companies that are trying to invest and expand. It's forcing them to look overseas to more favorable regulatory environments. This is not what we need to be right now.” He said that Gensler's adversarial relationship with crypto is, “damaging the industry”.
He's right. In fact, the situation is so bad that a lot of crypto companies are starting to move out of the US. Coinbase is opening an office in England, and Blockworks just moved its annual Digital Asset Summit from Washington, DC to London. The company said, “After conversations with dozens of leading institutions and crypto companies, we determined that Washington DC is not the best place to host an institutional crypto event.”
So why London? London has become one of the world's hottest crypto hubs. Innovation is thriving, new institutional investors are flocking in, and UK regulators are taking a pragmatic approach to crypto oversight. He's absolutely right. The British prime minister has welcomed crypto with open arms. Across Europe, institutions are getting excited about crypto thanks to sensible legislation. And so the Digital Asset Summit, which has been at the heart of institutional crypto adoption, says right now that place is London. The eighth annual Digital Asset Summit is March 18 to 20.
Yeah. I'm just afraid that Gary Gensler just doesn't get it. Everybody is mad at him. Congress where there's a bill to fire him. The financial press, which often writes editorials complaining about him, even past SEC commissioners who at a recent conference were unanimous in their criticism of him. And Gary Gensler is consistently losing in court lately, too. In a class action lawsuit against Uniswap, the court rejected claims that federal securities laws should apply to crypto, and said Congress needs to write new laws. The SEC wasn't involved in the case, but the ruling bashed the SEC anyway because Gary Gensler has been running around the country saying that current securities laws are all we need and that no new laws are necessary. The court said that's not true.
The SEC also recently lost the Grayscale case. Grayscale applied for permission to launch a Bitcoin ETF. The SEC said no. So Grayscale sued the SEC and the court ruled in favor of Grayscale and against the SEC. The court ruled that the SEC's decision was arbitrary and capricious. And for three years the SEC has been suing Ripple, arguing that its digital coin, XRP, is a security. The SEC lost that lawsuit, too. But instead of accepting the court's decision, the SEC is appealing. And just last week, the SEC dropped charges against Ripple’s CEO, a clear sign that they're finally recognizing they really don't have a case.
But the appeal is underway anyway. Ripple says they've spent $100 million in legal fees so far.
Please, somebody explain to me how is this protecting consumers?
The SEC is also suing Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, a publicly traded company. Yeah. The SEC gave Coinbase permission to go public, which means the SEC knows exactly what Coinbase does. And yet the SEC has decided to sue Coinbase for doing it. How does that make any sense?
The SEC is also suing Genesis and Gemini. They had a crypto product where investors earned interest on their holdings. Wait a minute. Aren't there regulations and laws governing all this? No there aren't. And Gensler says no new regulations or laws are needed. So instead of providing rules of the road, he's just filing lawsuits against companies when they do things he doesn't like. It's called “regulation by enforcement”. It's like driving on a highway. You don't know what the speed limit is until a cop pulls you over for speeding. How is that fair? How can a company do business in that kind of environment? This is why a lot of crypto companies are moving out of the US.
James Angel is an associate professor of finance at Georgetown University. He thinks the SEC has been hesitant to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF because the SEC fears it will be viewed as government approval of bitcoin. Angel wrote a letter to the SEC and he wrote in bold type all caps:
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IT’S TOO LATE. THE COW HAS LEFT THE BARN.
His point was that the SEC has already approved Bitcoin futures ETFs as well as leveraged futures ETFs. So what's the problem with a Bitcoin ETF? His letter to the SEC says, quote, “the SEC has continually rejected spot based ETFs while allowing futures based ones to trade. This makes no sense. The two markets are closely locked together, and the difference in prices between the spot bitcoin price and the futures price is negligible”. He also said the SEC is squandering its limited resources on, quote, “endless regulatory proceedings and fruitless litigation”. He urged the SEC to approve all the pending bitcoin ETF applications and in bold underlying text, he said, quote, “the SEC should stop wasting resources fighting bitcoin ETFs”.
Well, I hope the FCC pays attention to this professor of law. Blackrock is the third company to make changes to its Bitcoin ETF filing with the SEC in the past week. Ark, Fidelity, Grayscale have done it as well, and others are telling me they're working on amendments to their applications. To. The chief legal officer of Coinbase says he expects the SEC to approve these ETFs. JP Morgan says approval is going to come before January 10th. That's the deadline for the SEC's decision. And already if you look at the worldwide Google search for the phrase “spot Bitcoin ETF”, it hit an all-time high. This indicates maximum interest among the general population. In other words, more and more ordinary consumers and retail investors are scanning the web to learn about spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Morgan Stanley says based on current data, signs indicate that the crypto winter may be in the past and crypto spring is likely on the horizon. Bitcoin is up 70% year to date, 77% from last year's lows. Are you still telling me, after all of this content that you think bitcoin is a fad? You think bitcoin is a fraud? You think bitcoin is going away? You think your clients don't own it? You think your clients don't have an interest in it. You think they're not even curious about it. You think your clients aren't hearing about it from the media, from their friends, from their children?
I think they're hearing about it from everybody except you. RIAs manage $8 trillion in assets, and 77% of RIAs say that they're waiting for a Bitcoin ETF to be able to recommend it to clients. It is apparently on the horizon. The SEC may say yes tomorrow. They may say yes next week. They may say yes in a few months. When they say yes, there will be an unleashing of investor assets via financial advisors.
Think about this. The entire crypto market cap is about $1 trillion right now. RIAs manage $8 trillion if they put just 1% of assets into crypto. We're going to see tens of billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin. Matrixport Ventures says bitcoin's price when the Blackrock ETF is approved is going to rise between $42,000 and $56,000. It's currently only about $30,000. We're talking about a 50 to 100% increase in the price.
CryptoQuant, which is a blockchain analytics firm, says that approval of a Spot Bitcoin ETF could add $1 trillion to crypto, doubling its market cap. They predict that $155 billion is going to flow into bitcoin, pushing its price all the way up as high as $75,000. Well, more than double its current price.
You know, just last week, there was a false report issued by the media that the SEC did approve BlackRock's ETF, and within minutes, bitcoin rose to $30,000. It was a 20% jump in price in just minutes. It was just one rumor posted by just one crypto media outlet, and they deleted the post within 30 minutes when they realized they were wrong. But just think about that. One news report less than 30 minutes caused bitcoin's price to jump 20%. All because investors are excited waiting for the SEC to approve the spot Bitcoin ETF.
Guess what's going to happen when the SEC really does give approval? Like I said, that approval is coming soon. Maybe tomorrow, maybe this week, maybe next week, maybe by the end of the year. But soon. And could be really this week or next. Why? Blackrock has just announced that they are seeding their spot Bitcoin ETF. You don't see it in ETF unless you're expecting it to go to market really quickly. And DTCC has released Blackrock's Ticker, IBTC. So it's looking like Blackrock is expecting approval of its ETF very, very soon. Like maybe tomorrow, maybe this week, maybe next week. You don't have a lot of time to wait. You don't have a lot of time to wait. You need to get the knowledge that you need about crypto right now, so you're prepared and ready to help your clients when these ETFs do enter the market.
There are nine fund companies that have these ETFs coming. They're going to flood the market with marketing and advertising because they're going to try to win the competitive game to capture market share. Your clients are going to see and hear and read all about these new ETFs. And they're going to call you asking you for your opinion, asking you should they buy? How much should they buy? Which one should they buy.
Right now all you can say is sorry, I don't know anything more about bitcoin than you do. Really? You think your client will be satisfied with that answer? Your clients hire you to give them expert advice. You need to have that knowledge that they expect you to have. You need to demonstrate to them that you've gotten that knowledge, and there's only one way for you to do it the best, the fastest, the easiest way for you to get the knowledge you need. Get your CBDA to become Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets. It's offered by my company, DACFP, the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. The course we created has a world-class faculty. It's online self-study and self-paced. You can complete the course in a single weekend. Most advisors complete the course in less than two weeks, and you get to display your CBDA. It's listed in FINRA's database of professional designations - just like the CFP, the CFA, the CLU, and the CHFC.
The crypto winter is thawing fast, and soon we're going to be in the crypto spring. Bitcoin's price is already almost doubled from its low, and many are predicting that it's going to double again within the next several months. Are you going to be helpful to your clients or not? And keep this in mind, a lot of investors are starting to hear about the CBDA designation because it's been around for almost three years; thousands of financial professionals already hold the designation from 37 countries. When clients want crypto advice, they're going to want to get it from someone who knows what they're talking about.
And the best way to demonstrate, you know, what you're talking about is to hold the CBDA designation. If you don't hold it, your clients are going to go to somebody who does. You need to serve your clients. You also need to build your practice. And the CBDA designation will help you do both. We're the official crypto education partner for Fidelity and Schwab; for the CFP Board of Standards, the XY Planning Network, the Money Management Institute, the Institute for Independent Advisors, the Investment Adviser Association, and many more. Our crypto education is endorsed by Blackrock, Invesco, Global X, Franklin Templeton, Bitwise and so many more things are happening in this new asset class. Please don't be left out.
Enroll today and get your CBDA designation. The link for enrolling is in the show notes. There's a lot going on in crypto. You need to start helping your clients so you can integrate this new asset class into your diversified portfolio and make it a part of your routine money management strategies.
I know one thing. You've been noticing higher interest rates. That's great news, right? Because we're getting higher bond yields. But it also comes along with higher inflation. And the question is will interest rates go even higher yet. Because as rates go up bond values fall. So is now the time to buy bonds? How do you capture the highest yields that are available in today's bond market, which is so radically different of the bond market of just a couple of years ago? Well, I invite you to join me today for a special webinar at 1 p.m. Eastern: Capturing yields in a high rate environment with bond ETFs.
This is your opportunity to get the information you need to help your clients take advantage of the highest bond returns in decades. This webinar is going to reveal the best opportunities in fixed income right now, to give you the information you need to have about the economic outlook so you're ready for your client conversations. And if you're an investor, has your advisor talked to you about the bonds in your portfolio? We're going to tell you what you need to know about bond ETFs. I'm going to be joined by PIMCO's David Braun for this important and very timely webinar. One CE credit as well. It's today 1 p.m. eastern.
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