Know your role

Tyrone Ross, CEO and co-founder of Onramp Invest and founder of the storytelling consultancy firm 401stc, has been recognized as one of America’s top 100 financial advisors by Investopedia and as a top 10 advisor set to change the industry by Wealth Management. In partnership with CoinShares, Tyrone highlights the primary obstacles financial advisors face when engaging with crypto—knowledge gaps, compliance hurdles, and confidence in client communication.

In this episode, he stresses the need for financial advisors to uphold fiduciary duty while adapting to crypto’s unique risk profile. Advisors face two major hurdles when integrating crypto into client portfolios:

• Knowledge gap & confidence: traditionally, advisors are expected to be “the smartest in the room,” but many still feel underprepared to discuss crypto with authority. This lack of familiarity can undermine client trust and make it harder to deliver prudent, goal-aligned advice.

• Portfolio construction complexity: while advisors are well-versed in valuing stocks and bonds, crypto demands different evaluation metrics, such as Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, volatility, and drawdowns. Aligning these with long-term performance and client objectives is a specialized challenge.

Advisors’ role is to integrate crypto in a way that complements an existing financial plan, ensuring it occupies the correct proportion and function within the portfolio. This requires revisiting the Investor Policy Statement (IPS) to address diversification, time horizon, and volatility considerations specific to crypto assets. They also need to adapt strategies for two distinct client types:

• Clients who self-custody and need only advisory oversight.

• Clients who want the advisor to manage custody and require additional infrastructure and custodial partnerships.

Explore how Tyrone would address these challenges.

Key takeaways:

• Advisors are accustomed to traditional finance but lack confidence when advising on crypto.

• It is essential to align crypto integration with clients’ investment goals and risk tolerance.

• Advisors must remain fiduciaries—prioritizing client goals over personal bias.

• Sizing positions and rebalancing are crucial when including volatile assets like Bitcoin.