The Block: Bitwise survey: More financial advisors are eyeing crypto for their clients

A new survey shows that few financial advisors have allocated crypto for their clients' portfolios – but more say they intend to do so in 2020.

According to a new survey shared with The Block by cryptocurrency asset manager Bitwise, among the 400-plus financial advisors they spoke with in December 2019, only 6% of them currently have allocations to crypto in their client portfolios.

But an additional 7% said they would either “definitely” (1%) or “probably” (6%) make such allocations in the new year. The remainder said they either "probably" or "definitely" would not seek such investments.

The survey found that crypto’s perceived ability to act as an inflation hedge is the number one motivation for including it in portfolios. Indeed, 54% of surveyed advisors highlighted the low correlation between crypto returns and the returns of other assets as one of crypto's most attractive features.

This warming attitude also comes from advisors’ realization that their clients are already interested in crypto assets. 76% of them said that clients made inquiries about crypto in 2019, the survey shows, and 72% suspect that their clients may be investing in crypto on their own.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said that they expecting the price of bitcoin to go up over the next five years.