SotN #36: DeFi Crypto Index For Financial Advisors | Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan
Bankless
Bankless
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2021
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, joins Bankless for this week's State of the Nation!
Founded in 2017, Bitwise Asset Management pioneered the first cryptocurrency index fund and provides rules-based exposure to the cryptoasset space. Learn about Bitwise's newest product, their DeFi Crypto Index Fund.
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SotN #36: Bitwise DeFi Crypto Index | CIO Matt Hougan
Bitwise is connecting DeFi assets to the world of ‘big money.’ Matt Hougan is CIO (Chief Investment Officer) of Bitwise, and before moving into the crypto space, he pioneered the ETF investment vehicles in the world of traditional finance.
Matt, with his dog by his side, posits that there are three ‘buckets’ of wealth in America where capital is pooled. The first is ‘Self-Directed Retail Investors,’ who has bootstrapped crypto from the ground up. The second is ‘Institutional Investors,’ including Venture Capital Firms, Endowments, Foundations, and other large funds. The third – and most neglected – is capital under the ‘Financial Advisor’ umbrella. This is where the 1%-er money is, and this bucket is just now gaining access to the crypto space.
The Financial Advisor bucket holds $30-$40 Trillion in assets, and the minds in this space are changing as crypto is increasingly legitimized through improving infrastructure and the strong recovery from the 2017 cycle. Building efficient vehicles to bridge this wealth into crypto is critical for large-scale adoption.
This is where Bitwise comes in. Bitwise manages around $1 Billion in assets and created the first Crypto Index Fund, offering a variety of products to retail investors, accredited investors, and financial advisors. Most recently, Bitwise launched its DeFi Crypto Index Fund, exposing financial advisors to the world of DeFi. Analogues to Legacy Finance like Price-to-Earnings Ratios and Cash Flows make DeFi compelling and understandable, but DeFi is showing itself to be “cheaper, more efficient, more open, more transparent, [and] more verifiable.”
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RELEVANT LINKS:
Matt on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Matt_Hougan?s=20
Bitwise:
https://www.bitwiseinvestments.com/
Matt's CFA Report on Cryptoassets:
https://www.cfainstitute.org/-/media/documents/article/rf-brief/rfbr-cryptoassets.ashx
Makerburn
https://makerburn.com/#/
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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, Bankless Nation, welcome to another episode of State of the Nation. |
| 0:18.4 | This is our opportunity to talk about what is happening lately in crypto related to some |
| 0:23.4 | of the big picture stuff we talk about on the podcast and in the newsletter and drop |
| 0:27.9 | some insights and action items. I am super excited about the guest we have today. He is the |
| 0:34.0 | CIO Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise, Matt Hogan. We're going to get into how DeFi is going |
| 0:41.9 | mainstream with traditional investors, but first we're going to give you a bit of intro information. |
| 0:47.9 | David, how are you doing today? Absolutely fantastic. Well, the markets are doing one thing. The |
| 0:52.9 | crypto world and is specifically DeFi is continuing to march forward unhindered and I'm super excited |
| 0:59.7 | just to get into the conversation about how Bitwise is connecting DeFi and DeFi assets to the world |
| 1:06.8 | of what I consider big money, which I like. Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be an exciting |
| 1:13.2 | conversation because Matt really comes from that world and he basically helped to mainstream ETFs, |
| 1:18.5 | at the very beginning of ETFs now crypto is sort of entering its close to mainstream movement. |
| 1:24.8 | There's a big educational campaign with traditional investors. We're going to get to all of that |
| 1:29.3 | and introduce Matt in a moment. But first, let's talk about what is new in the nation. David, |
| 1:35.0 | we're getting ready to celebrate our one year anniversary. In fact, the podcast is now officially |
| 1:40.5 | as of today, one year old and we're going to be, I know, dude, I can't believe it. |
| 1:47.1 | Well, this was all your idea. So for the good and bad guys, David was the person who |
| 1:51.6 | fits me to do a podcast and I was like, I don't know, what are we going to say? Well, we have |
| 1:56.2 | enough episodes. Well, here we are. Is there going to be enough content? Yeah, that's what I said. |
| 2:02.7 | Here we are, 150 plus episodes later. Just back from Mark Cuban on the podcast, |
| 2:08.8 | their first year pretty exciting. Anyway, we're going to be doing a one year anniversary episode. |
| 2:13.1 | David, do you want to tease that? Yeah. So it's going to be kind of a bankless episode zero reprise |
... |
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