In today’s crypto for advisers, Dovile Silkyte from WisdomTree talks about the growth of crypto products and how they have evolved into a strategic investment distribution.
Then Kim Klemballa answers the Coindesk index questions about digital active benchmarks and trends in ASK A Expert.
– Sarah Morton
You read Crypto for advisers, Coindesk’s weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisers. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.
The development of cryptopodes – from speculative efforts to strategic assets
Crypto is no longer the “wild west” of investment. When they are dismissed as simply speculative efforts, digital assets have matured to a credible and increasingly strategic component of institutional portfolios.
Figure 1: Global assets under management (AUM) in physical crypto -TPs
Source: Bloomberg, Wisdomtree. April 1, 2025. Historical performance is not an indication of future performance and any investment may fall in value.
From the end of 1. Quarter 2025 Global Assets under the Management (AUM) were in physical Bitcoin exchange traded products (ETPs) more than $ 100 billion. This figure signalizes deep, persistent conviction from institutional investors, which means this is no longer just the area of early adoptors. Today, sovereign wealth funds, pension schemes and asset leaders assign to crypto in scale.
After more than 15 years of development, more boom-and-bust cycles and a global user base exceeding half a billion people, Krypto has found that there is no passing trend. Bitcoin has emerged as a cryptoma rosabetic button, decentralized and increasingly placed as a core that holds within diversified multi-active portfolios.
But here the catch crypto allocations are still under-diversified.
Despite growing adoption, most crypto portfolios remain narrowly concentrated in Bitcoin. It is a legacy of mindset and one that is fundamentally deficient. Investors would not award their entire equity exposure to Apple nor rely rely on a single bond to represent fixed income. Still, it is precisely how many still treat crypto.
Diversity is fundamental in traditional funding. It spreads risk, improves resistance and locks access to wider options. The same principle applies in digital assets.
The Cryptocurrency universe has expanded far beyond Bitcoin and evolved into a dynamic ecosystem of various technologies, use cases and investment.
Smart contract platforms such as Ethereum, Solana and Cardano build decentralized infrastructure to everything from decentralized funding (DEFI) to non-funny symbols (NFTs), each with unique weighing in scalability, security and network design. Meanwhile, polkadot promotes interoperability, enabling trouble-free communication across chains-a important building block for a multi-chain future.
In addition to these layers 1 blockchains, we see quick innovation in:
- Really world (rwa) -tokenization where traditional funding meets blockchain rails
- Defi -Protocols that operate decentralized lending, trade and liquidity solutions
- Web3 -Infrastructure, from decentral identity to storage, forming the backbone of a more open internet
Each of these sectors carries its own risk-return profile, adoption curve and regulatory trajectory. Treating them as interchangeable or worse, ignoring them altogether, resembling to reduce global stock investment to a single technical stock. It’s not only outdated – it’s strategically ineffective.
Crypto diversification is not about avoiding risk, but rather catching the full spectrum of innovation. In a multi-thesis, the world that does not diversify, it means to leave the option on the table.
The case for crypto indexes
The reality is that most investors do not have the time, tools or technical expertise to keep up with 24/7 crypto markets. Crypto indexes offer a strong solution for those seeking broad, systematic exposure without having to dive into tokenomics, validator upgrades or network upgrades.
Like equity investors, depends on benchmarks such as the S&P 500 or MSCI indexes, diversified crypto index investors give access to the market passively – with scale, structure and simplicity. No guesswork, no token-picking, no need for constant rebalances. Just pure, rules -based exposure to the evolving crypto arcade.
– Dovile Silenskyte, Director of Research in Digital Assets, WisDomtree
Ask an expert
Sp. Why is diversification important in crypto?
ONE. Among over 20,000 listed cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin now draws approx. 65% of the total market value. Diversity is the key to institutional investors to control volatility and capture wider opportunities. Indexes can be an effective way to track asset class performance, while products such as Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFS) and Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) can provide exposure to multiple cryptocurrencies at once, which could potentially help spread the risk.
Question: What trends do you look at digital assets?
ONE. Institutional investors are on the market and push digital assets from a niche investment to a key asset class. EY-Partenon and Coinbase conducted a survey of more than 350 institutional investors worldwide in January 2025. Of the investors surveyed, 87% plan to increase the total grants to crypto in 2025, which spans a number of options, such as exchange products (ETPs), investments in digital asset companies, stableecoins, fastenes and themes. According to the survey, 55% spot -crypto through ETPs with 69% of those planning to own Spot Crypto planning to do so using registered vehicles.
Sp. Does a wide -based benchmark exist in crypto?
ONE. There are wide benchmarks in digital assets. At the Coindesk index, we launched the Coindesk 20 index in January 2024 to capture the performance of Top Digital Assets and act as a gateway to the measurement, trade and invest in the ever-growing crypto asset class. Coindesk 20 is designed with liquidity and diversification in mind and has generated an unprecedented $ 14.5 billion in the total trading volume and is available in twenty investment vehicles globally. Coindesk -indexes also have Coindesk 80 -Index, Coindesk 100 -Index (Coindesk 20 + Coindesk 80) and Coindesk Memecoin Index, among others.
And Kim Klemballa, Head of Marketing, Coindesk -Indexes
Continue to read
