Financial Advisors Are Shifting Focus From Bitcoin to Stablecoins and Tokenization

Advisors are looking less at Bitcoin and more at stablecoins and tokenization. That shift could bring crypto’s next growth phase closer to the financial sector.

Key Takeaways

• According to Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, financial advisors are showing more interest in stablecoins and tokenization than in Bitcoin.
• Stablecoins and tokenization are getting attention because of their use in payments, capital markets, and more efficient transactions.
• Hougan sees new crypto products and real-world use cases as possible drivers of the next growth phase.

Financial advisors are increasingly focusing on stablecoins and tokenization, and less on Bitcoin, according to conversations Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan had with more than forty advisors. Even with the current bear market, interest in crypto is still there, but the focus is shifting toward use cases that are closer to traditional finance.

Growing Interest in Stablecoins and Tokenization

In several conversations, it stood out that stablecoins and tokenization are drawing advisors’ attention. These topics come up a lot in financial industry discussions, partly because influential leaders like the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and CEOs of major financial institutions keep bringing them up. Stablecoins are being used more and more in payments and capital markets, which is making them more relevant.

According to Hougan, another factor is that trading in traditional safe havens like gold is less popular right now, which is pushing more attention toward crypto use cases with a direct link to fiat currencies. On top of that, tokenization’s integration into traditional markets could lead to more efficient transactions and broader adoption.

Ongoing Interest Despite the Market Pullback

Even though Bitcoin is still seen as an attractive long-term investment, especially at a price above $60.000 (€52.000), advisors are showing more curiosity about crypto with real use cases. Historically, Bitcoin often led the way out of earlier bear markets, but now new products like tokenization and stablecoins seem to be taking the lead.

Hougan stresses that every major bull market in crypto has been driven by new products and new groups of investors. The next growth phase could come from the rise of real-world use cases, including perpetual futures and tokenization. Financial advisors collectively manage more than $175 trillion (€152 trillion), and their broader, more nuanced view of crypto could give the market a major boost.

What This Means for European Investors

For European investors, this shift could point to a growing level of professionalism and institutional adoption in the crypto market. The attention on stablecoins and tokenization lines up with the growing integration of these technologies into traditional financial systems around the world. That could also create opportunities in Europe for wider adoption and new investment options within regulated frameworks. A recent SpaceX IPO shows how tokenized stock products and crypto derivatives are increasingly overlapping with the broader digital asset market.