Gemini Wants TradFi RIAs to Buy Crypto via Envestnet Partnership

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

  • Gem­i­ni acquired dig­i­tal asset port­fo­lio man­age­ment plat­form BITRIA in Jan­u­ary in effort to improve cryp­to access to asset managers
  • Franklin Tem­ple­ton, Ark Invest and Valkyrie Invest­ments have tar­get­ed the advi­sor com­mu­ni­ty with recent cryp­to SMA launches

Gem­i­ni is join­ing the push to offer cryp­to to tra­di­tion­al finance (Trad­Fi) advi­sors, with the Win­klevoss-owned firm expand­ing its reach via a new partnership.

The exchange’s lat­est bid to inte­grate with one of the largest dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­forms for finan­cial pros mir­rors oth­ers across both finance and cryp­to indus­tries. Mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies, includ­ing Valkyrie and Ark Invest, are now seek­ing to bring expo­sure to the asset class to a broad­er range of investors. 

By team­ing up with Envestnet’s Tama­rac plat­form, Gem­i­ni will effec­tive­ly offer a direct cus­to­di­al feed for cryp­to man­aged accounts to an enor­mous chunk of the Trad­Fi sec­tor, com­prised of more than 3,000 reg­is­tered invest­ment advi­sors (RIAs) over­see­ing more than $1.3 tril­lion in assets.

“Tools deliv­er­ing trans­paren­cy into clients’ cryp­to hold­ings are essen­tial for empow­er­ing advi­sors to pro­vide advice that is tru­ly holis­tic,” Dani Fava, Envestnet’s pres­i­dent of prod­uct inno­va­tion, said in a state­ment. “The inte­gra­tion between Gem­i­ni BITRIA and the Envest­net Tama­rac plat­form pro­vides a uni­fied view of client port­fo­lios across all asset classes.”

The move comes after Gem­i­ni acquired dig­i­tal asset port­fo­lio man­age­ment plat­form BITRIA in Jan­u­ary to make avail­able to wealth man­agers fea­tures such as SMA con­struc­tion and port­fo­lio rebalancing. 

The com­pa­ny revealed the buy of trad­ing tech­nol­o­gy plat­form Omniex less than a week lat­er in an effort to sim­pli­fy the expe­ri­ence for insti­tu­tion­al investors look­ing to go deep­er into crypto.

More recent­ly, Gem­i­ni struck a deal with quan­ti­ta­tive finan­cial advis­er Bet­ter­ment to offer cryp­to port­fo­lios to its 730,000 customers.

Dan Eyre, head of Gem­i­ni BITRIA, told Block­works that Tama­rac is an ide­al part­ner as Gem­i­ni looks to broad­en the reach of its BITRIA offering. 

“The mil­lions of investors who pre­fer to work with an advis­er when mak­ing invest­ment deci­sions will now be able to engage with the Gem­i­ni ecosys­tem to gain access to cryp­to through these offer­ings,” Eyre said.

Gemini joins push to bring crypto to TradFi

Gemini’s inte­gra­tion with the Tama­rac plat­form con­tin­ues a trend of cryp­to firms mak­ing moves to tar­get finan­cial advi­sors in recent weeks. 

Franklin Tem­ple­ton revealed last month that it was prep­ping its first cryp­to-focused sep­a­rate­ly man­aged accounts (SMAs), while Ark Invest fol­lowed suit to offer sim­i­lar prod­ucts ear­li­er this week. 

Both firms part­nered with dig­i­tal asset SMA plat­form Eagle­brook Advi­sors to bring the strate­gies to RIA clients.

Valkyrie Invest­ments also unveiled cryp­to SMAs this week. John Key, the firm’s head of dis­tri­b­u­tion said he believes pen­sions, endow­ments and cor­po­ra­tions are like­ly to piv­ot to these types of prod­ucts once the mar­kets stabilize. 

SMAs dif­fer from exchange-trad­ed funds (ETFs) and oth­er sim­i­lar prod­ucts in that they allow own­er­ship of the under­ly­ing assets, unlike ETFs, which only offer shares in the fund itself.

Eagle­brook Advi­sors CEO Christo­pher King pre­vi­ous­ly called the US wealth man­age­ment mar­ket the “low­est-hang­ing fruit” for the cryp­to industry. 

Though only 14% of sur­veyed advis­ers were using or rec­om­mend­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cies, accord­ing to a March Cerul­li Asso­ciates report, 45% expect they will be using cryp­to in the future due to client requests.

“We see these devel­op­ments as a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion as the cryp­to asset class matures,” Eyre said. 

“The evo­lu­tion to pro­vid­ing an all-in-one offer­ing that fits the needs of insti­tu­tions and advis­ers took time to develop…and we’re excit­ed about our abil­i­ty to offer a full suite of prod­ucts that fit the needs of these audiences.”


Attend DAS:LONDON and hear how the largest Trad­Fi and cryp­to insti­tu­tions see the future of crypto’s insti­tu­tion­al adop­tion. Reg­is­ter here.


  • Ben Strack
    Ben Strack is a Den­ver-based reporter cov­er­ing macro and cryp­to-native funds, finan­cial advi­sors, struc­tured prod­ucts, and the inte­gra­tion of dig­i­tal assets and decen­tral­ized finance (DeFi) into tra­di­tion­al finance. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, he cov­ered the asset man­age­ment indus­try for Fund Intel­li­gence and was a reporter and edi­tor for var­i­ous local news­pa­pers on Long Island. He grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land with a degree in journalism.

    Con­tact Ben via email at [email pro­tect­ed]

Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *