With over 56 million Coinbase users and more than $223 billion in assets under management on the platform, there is a very good chance you have a cryptoasset account. And if you are a financial advisor reading this, there is an even better chance your clients have a crypotassets account that you do not know about.
As bitcoin, ether, and other cryptoassets continue to mature, grow in popularity and acceptance, and become greater components of investors’ portfolios, it is time for financial advisors and their clients to start treating these accounts like any other held-away investment account.
When starting a new financial planning relationship, financial advisors begin to collect important financial information like 401(k), 529, student loan, and mortgage balances and often have clients link these held-away accounts to the financial planning software, portfolio management systems, and performance reporting programs to monitor and advise on the accounts, even though they are not under the advisor’s discretionary management. Having ongoing access to activity, cost-basis information, and other data points is extremely important to the advisor’s ability to properly advise their clients—it also adds to the efficiency of meetings and creates a better overall experience. Cryptoassets also present a number of unique planning opportunities for financial advisors to stay on top of and having held-away access can help make sure they do not miss an opportunity to have estate planning conversations, harvest losses and take advantage of the lack of a wash sale rule for cryptoassets, and advise on forks and halvings that occur without clients realizing.
Not only do financial advisors benefit from having access to client cryptoasset accounts and wallets as held-away accounts, so do clients. By linking their accounts to their advisor’s techs stack, clients have the ability to see all of their financial accounts in a single location, are able to see the performance of their held-away accounts (many companies do not provide account performance on their websites), and know the projection they are viewing are up to date and have captured all facets of their financial plan—there is nothing left out.
There is no reason Coinbase and other cryptoasset accounts and wallets should continue to be omitted from the financial planning process, other than the technology to support this has not been available…
If you believe that your advice will change the world, marketing goes from a chore to a sacred responsibility.
— Carl Richards (@behaviorgap) April 23, 2020
I try not to talk my book on here, but as you can see my friend Carl Richards has given me permission to do so today.
As I shared earlier this spring, I joined Onramp Invest to do my part to push my profession forward by helping financial advisors educate themselves and their clients on cryptoassets, incorporate cryptoassets into their planning, and position their practices for the future. We have an exciting roadmap ahead and we’ve accomplished our first goal which was to provide access to held-away cryptoasset accounts to financial advisors. Today, advisors can use Onramp to have clients link their Coinbase and Gemini accounts to view them in their workflow through companies like Advyzon, with more to come, or on their Onramp dashboard. In the future we’ll be able to include self-custody like Casa and hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor. There are no more blind spots in the advisor-client relationship.
If you’re a client wanting to make sure your cryptoasset holdings are included in your financial planning tell them about Onramp Invest and send them here.
If you’re a financial advisor wanting to get more comfortable with cryptoassets I cannot recommend Onramp Academy enough and let’s chat if you’re ready to start seeing your clients’ total picture. There will be an extended version of this post in Onramp Academy helping financial advisors to begin introducing the topic of linking held-away cryptoasset accounts–we want to empower you to have these new conversations!!
At a minimum, advisors and clients should be discussing the cryptoassets that are currently being held, and there’s no longer a reason to stop there–the technology is now available to treat cryptoassets like traditional assets and they should command the same respect.
Disclaimer: Nothing on this blog should be considered advice, or recommendations. If you have questions pertaining to your individual situation you should consult your financial advisor. For all of the disclaimers, please see my disclaimers page.
