Bitwise CEO: Wealth Managers Poised to Pour Hundreds of Billions Into Crypto

Hunter Horsley, chief executive officer at Bitwise, has predicted that wealth managers are going to buy 100s of billions of crypto for their clients.

He has summarized the entire logic from Devin Ryan’s thread into one compact message. 

Small exposure matters

The core idea is that enormous pools of slow-moving capital are finally waking up to crypto.

U.S. wealth managers (financial advisors, broker-dealers, RIAs) and so on collectively manage $30 trillion. That’s the biggest pool of investable capital in the U.S. (far larger than hedge funds or VC).

Until recently, advisors legally couldn’t put client money into crypto, and compliance departments hadn’t approved crypto exposure. Moreover, custody requirements made Bitcoin impossible to hold in client accounts.

So, although Bitcoin ETFs launched in early 2024, wealth managers did not immediately buy, even if they wanted to.

Ryan’s point is that this slow build-out is normal and healthy. Even tiny allocations create massive flows

If the industry moves reach 0.5% exposure, that alone produces hundreds of billions in inflows.

Strong conviction

Despite the market pulling back, Hunter Horsley’s poll shows that crypto investors still have remarkably strong conviction. Out of more than 4,500 responses, fewer than 10% said they were selling. At the same time, more than 40% said they were actively buying the dip. Another 37.6% are simply holding their positions, signaling no panic, and only 9.8% remain undecided.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of respondents (roughly 80%) are either maintaining their exposure or increasing it despite the recent dip.