invezz.com
Digital wealth management and investing platform Betterment is keeping an eye on crypto space with a view of offering digital asset-related investment opportunities to customers, Betterment CEO Sarah Levy said during a Yahoo Finance interview.
Rapid growth, passive investment favored
While acknowledging the volatility of the asset, Levy insisted her company that boats around $30 billion in assets under management could limit offerings to long-term portfolios. It will also educate users on how to mitigate some of the risks stemming from the volatility associated with large swings in the crypto market.
On June 22, Levy stated, according to Yahoo Finance:
We know investors increasingly have an interest in crypto, so what we’re doing is really trying to figure out: Is there a way that we can offer crypto with a guided wrapper so that we can help educate along the way? I think how that will manifest itself will be more through a lens of a long-term buy and hold the asset as a smaller portion of a portfolio, rather than as sort of a trading opportunity short term.
This comment was made right before Cathie Wood, Ark Invest Founder, filed to create a bitcoin (BTC/USD) exchange traded fund (ETF) with SEC. Despite relatively conservative company policy, Betterment’s CEO is enthusiastic about cryptocurrency. As crypto tends to run counter to economic cycle fluctuations, it can help the platform’s clients diversify their holdings.
Betterment has been democratizing finance
Betterment considers itself a “pioneer” in the movement to democratize finance for nearly than a decade, the CEO said. Democratizing finance deals with making investing more accessable to the “common investor.” But Betterment plays a unique role as it gears towards investors with a long-term focus.
We think about retirement and we think about what are the choices you can make now that give you a better life long-term.
Unlike Robinhood and other popular trading apps, which offer options to buy and sell popular coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH/USD), and Dogecoin (DOGE/USD), crypto is absent on Betterment. Coinbase Global (COIN), the biggest US crypto exchange, was listed publicly in April. Its value was determined at almost $100 billion. The stock price has dropped by almost a quarter since June 29.