Listen on The Move
Ric Edelman was early on Bitcoin. He was right. Now he explains why the argument has changed completely.
Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines (one of the largest independent RIA Firms in the U.S.), the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals (DACFP) and one of the architects of modern independent wealth management, joins Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick on Raise Your Average for a searching, unvarnished conversation about where the digital asset story actually stands today.
With Bitcoin off roughly 50% from its peak and public attention captured by AI, Edelman reframes what this moment demands of advisors and investors. He traces the arc from being booed off stages in 2013 to watching Morgan Stanley tell its sixteen thousand advisors to allocate two to four percent to crypto, and argues that the real inflection point has already passed.
The conversation moves well beyond price, covering the quiet institutionalization of blockchain rails inside the largest banks on earth, why a 90-year-old client may have every reason to own crypto, how advisors are quietly losing clients to an asset class they refuse to understand, and why the stalling of the CLARITY Act exposes a more troubling political dynamic than most observers have admitted.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction: why most Bitcoin opinions haven't been earned
01:00 – Who is Ric Edelman? DACFP, Edelman Financial Engines, and the long conviction
07:00 – Bitcoin's 50% drawdown in context: behavioral lessons that apply to every asset class
09:00 – Why AI stole crypto's thunder (and why that may be an opportunity)
11:00 – Ric's origin story: from "digital what?" in 2012 to founding DACFP
16:00 – Bitcoin vs. Amazon: the chart that changes the conversation
19:00 – The CLARITY Act: why it stalled, who to blame, and why it may not matter
22:00 – How allocator sentiment has shifted from passion to shrug (and why that's healthy)
25:00 – TradFi adoption: JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and the race to tokenize
28:00 – The training gap: why the C-suite is ready but advisors still can't answer client questions
32:00 – Beyond Bitcoin ETFs: 200+ crypto products advisors don't know exist
35:00 – Why older advisors say "why bother?" and why that logic is quietly destroying their books
40:00 – The 90-year-old client: asset allocation in the image of your heirs
48:00 – Tokenization and stablecoins: the plumbing that changes everything
54:00 – Real-world use cases: casinos, capital efficiency, and the velocity of money
57:00 – The American blind spot: why two billion people see crypto as a lifeline
01:01:00 – Why Wall Street didn't die: it adopted the rails instead
01:05:00 – Trump, the CLARITY Act ethics clause, and the politics of crypto self-dealing
01:09:00 – Where to start: DACFP, the CBDA designation, and The Truth About Crypto
01:13:00 – Final thought: crypto as the most intellectually interesting asset class alive
DACFP - Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals
Ric Edelman on Linkedin
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