Crypto 101 For ETF Advisors & Investors

[ETF Pulse appears Mondays and Thursdays. Drew Voros is Editor-in-Chief of ETF.com.]

Sooner or later, we’ll be trading bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., hopefully not in some convoluted form of futures or other derivatives, but ETFs backed by actual bitcoin.

However, while it’s clear the SEC can’t figure out what to do with bitcoin, like a new parent with an incorrigible toddler, the crypto train is moving along and it's passing the SEC by. As an advisor or serious investor though, you can’t ignore this new asset class any longer. Pull your head out of the sand if you’re still waiting for this to go away. (Read: “Why Advisors Should Care About Crypto”)

We at ETF.com have been working throughout 2021 to bring a new chapter to our coverage and education offerings in anticipation of the inevitable: crypto-backed ETFs of every sort. Physically backed is preferred–but in the meantime, derivatives-based funds and other forms may be approved first. You’ll have questions or will receive them from clients.

We’ve been soft-launching our Bitcoin & Crypto section, with the help of our data partner Coin Metrics, to bring what we aim to be crypto coverage and education with the ETF advisor and investor in mind. We’re not trying to be the smartest crypto expert people on the internet, but rather the best site for beginners, offering easy-to-access and-understand content.

ETF.com’s New Crypto Reports

As the evolution of our coverage and education content continues, we have an exciting new enhancement to the section. With the same design and goals in mind as our ETF fund reports—such as the one for the largest ETF in the world, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY),—our crypto reports offer a straightforward approach to explaining each major cryptocurrency:

• What Is Bitcoin? ($763B market cap)
• What Is Ethereum? ($322B market cap)
• What Is Dogecoin? ($26B market cap)
• What Is Ripple? ($87B market cap)

To make the math easy, that’s more than $1 trillion of assets invested over the last five to seven years in just those coins, and that’s not counting the other major cryptocurrencies that see market caps represent nearly another $1 trillion. And we have reports for those, too. 

This conversation is looming for financial advisors, whether you like crypto or not:

Client: What’s the difference between bitcoin and Ethereum?
Advisors: I’m not sure you should be dabbling in …

Not the answer you want to give your clients. And investors should consider and be conversant in this new chapter of investing—nothing to find or learn with your head in the sand.

To access our fund reports, you can click on the name of the cryptocurrency in our ticker tape at the top of the section or in the far right tab, as seen below:

Not Stopping Here

We’ll be building out more data and education features along with coverage led by ETF.com Crypto Editor & Analyst Sumit Roy.

I’d appreciate hearing your feedback on what we’re delivering–good, bad or indifferent. Reader critiques make our coverage and education better.

Drop me a line.

Drew Voros can be reached at [email protected]