Behind the Ticker: BBB and Cyber Hornet ETFs
20-30% of your clients already own crypto outside your practice. Mike Willis of Cyber Hornet ETFs makes the case for why every advisor needs a digital asset plan, and how BBB's 75/25 S&P 500/Bitcoin structure does the heavy lifting for them.
In this episode of Behind the Ticker, Brad Roth, CIO of Thor Financial Technologies, sits down with Mike Willis, Co-Founder and CEO of Cyber Hornet ETFs to talk crypto and bitcoin investing, proxy voting, the Cyber Hornet S&P 500 and Bitcoin 75/25 Strategy ETF (BBB), and more.
You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any of your preferred streaming platforms.
Behind Cyber Hornet ETFs
Mike Willis has spent his entire 25-year career on Wall Street, starting in grad school in the 1990s all the way through UBS, where he progressed from individual stock trading into asset allocation. For seven years he beat it the benchmark S&P 500, then 2013 hit and the S&P returned 32% while his portfolios returned 14 to 16%. The realization that thousands of hours of work had been outdone by one of the cheapest products on the market reframed everything.
What followed was the founding of his own firm and the launch of an S&P 500 index fund. Willis met with Jack Bogle in his office for an hour three months before he died — Bogle's final Wall Street Journal op-ed warned that the largest index fund companies would soon hold virtual voting control over corporate America. That conversation, plus Mike's own evolution into a Bitcoiner, shaped the dual mission of Cyber Hornet ETFs: bridge TradFi to DeFi, and offer a founder-run alternative to BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.
The firm's mission is to bring crypto exposure into mainstream advisor portfolios faster than the natural process of index inclusion would allow. The name Cyber Hornet is a Michael Saylor invention from a tweet that referenced Bitcoin as "a swarm of cyber hornets," and the mascot caught on with Bitcoiners.
The Cyber Hornet S&P 500 and Bitcoin 75/25 Strategy ETF (BBB) launched in December 2023 and is the firm's flagship crypto product. The fund holds 75% S&P 500 exposure and 25% Bitcoin, rebalanced monthly. The structure is designed to do one thing well: keep investors exposed to crypto across a full decade, including through the deep drawdowns that define the asset class.
The argument for the 75/25 ratio is grounded in trader behavior more than back-tested math. In Willis’s experience, clients can tolerate about a 30% drawdown before they start calling. By 40%, the calls get frequent. By 50%, they're usually out, and by 60% an advisor may have lost the client entirely. The firm tested 50/50, 60/40, and other allocations during construction. 75/25 was the sweet spot with enough Bitcoin to matter on the upside, but bounded enough that the worst years stay inside the threshold clients can actually live through.
The three-year track record illustrates the design intent. In 2024, when Bitcoin had a strong year, the S&P returned roughly 25% while BBB returned 39% on a 14-point kicker from the Bitcoin sleeve. In 2025, Bitcoin had a down year and IBIT was down 7%, with BBB up 10%. Year-to-date in 2026, with Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, and XRP all off 50 to 70% from October highs, while BBB has been in a roughly +/- 5% band. The fund is doing exactly what it was built to do: dampen the volatility without giving up the exposure.
Tune in to listen to the full conversation that includes the importance of preserving shareholder voting rights, Cyber Hornet’s INDEX fund, and more. You can also learn more about the firm at their website.
Disclaimer: The market insights, projections, and investment strategies expressed in this article are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ETF.com. This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice.
