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Somewhere between the Coinbase hawk and bitcoin’s institutional whale sits a growing class of high-end retail investors pushing their money managers to join the bull run.
Their calls have gotten loud enough for Mariner Wealth Advisors to take action. Now, the Registered Financial Advisor (RIA), whose network of Independent Financial Advisors (FA) manages $ 29 billion, is giving its 23,000 clients a way in.
On Tuesday, Mariner Wealth announced that its 346 FAs will soon have access to bitcoin markets through a separately managed account (SMA) set up by cryptocurrency firm Eaglebrook Advisors. The bitcoin SMA will allow Mariner FAs to trade bitcoin, hold it, and calculate tax charges on behalf of their customers when fully implemented by the end of the year.
Eaglebrook CEO Christopher King told CoinDesk that the partnership is a first step in attracting a huge potential class of investors worth between $ 5 million and $ 10 million who he said did not participate in the bull run. These high-end retail types run their stock, bond and fund operations via FA, but more often than not, the traditional companies behind those FAs didn’t have the infrastructure to run on bitcoin, he said. said King.
“Nobody was building for the independent registered investment adviser market that I know manages trillions of dollars,” he said. (TD Ameritrade estimates that RIAs manage more than $ 4.7 trillion in client assets.)
King created an SMA for FAs to enter bitcoin markets, buy, hold, hold, sell, and calculate tax charges just as they do for other asset classes. He spent 12 months integrating the SMA with Mariner Wealth’s existing portfolio reporting systems. The idea was to make bitcoin allocations a perfect part of the FA’s wealth management strategy, he said.
“It is really important to include bitcoin in [clients’] wealth plan and wealth plan, as well as allowing consultants to bill on assets, the same way they would for Apple or Tesla or Amazon stock, “he said.
Eaglebrook offers bitcoin custody services through Gemini Trust Company at launch. As of Tuesday, Mariner is Eaglebrook SMA’s only customer.
King said he hopes more investment advisors sign up.
“It’s a custom solution, but almost every RIA is structured like Mariner,” said King. “If it works for them, it will pretty much work for the country’s first hundred, thousand” RIAs.
