Bitcoin has spent years cultivating its “digital gold” narrative. Turns out, the people who manage other people’s money are more interested in the pipes than the precious metal.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan revealed in a June 10 memo that after speaking with over 40 financial advisors in a single day, a record for the firm, the dominant conversation topic wasn’t Bitcoin’s price trajectory or its role as a hedge against inflation. It was stablecoins, tokenization, and the practical infrastructure layer of crypto.
The numbers tell a clear story
Bitwise’s annual survey with VettaFi, released on January 13, backs up Hougan’s anecdotal observations with actual data.
30% of advisors cited stablecoins and tokenization as their top area of interest in the crypto space. Only 22% pointed to Bitcoin’s role as a hedge against fiat debasement, the narrative that has powered much of the asset’s institutional adoption story. Another 19% flagged crypto-linked artificial intelligence as their primary focus.
Hougan described the shift as a pivot toward the “practical applications” of crypto. Payments, capital markets infrastructure, and the tokenization of real-world assets, often abbreviated as RWAs, were the topics that dominated his conversations.
One data point from the survey should give Bitcoin maximalists pause but also some comfort. 99% of advisors who already hold crypto said they intend to maintain or increase their allocations.
Who benefits from this shift
Hougan’s memo wasn’t shy about naming names. He speculated that the advisor enthusiasm for stablecoins and tokenization would primarily benefit infrastructure projects linked to Ethereum and Solana, the two smart-contract platforms where much of the tokenization and stablecoin activity actually happens.
On the equities side, he pointed to Circle, which trades under the ticker CRCL as the issuer of USDC, and Coinbase (COIN), which serves as a major on-ramp for institutional crypto activity and earns revenue from USDC reserves.
Bitwise itself manages over $15 billion in crypto assets and has been surveying financial advisors annually since 2018.
The regulatory tailwind nobody’s ignoring
This shift didn’t happen in a vacuum. The GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, established a cohesive regulatory framework for stablecoin issuance in the United States. For an advisor class that has historically cited regulatory uncertainty as a top barrier to crypto adoption, that legislation was essentially a permission slip.