Advisors Favor Stablecoins, Tokenized Assets Over Bitcoin

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan wrote a memo on June 10 summarizing a day of sales calls in which he spoke with more than 40 financial advisors. He met eight advisory teams on a Monday, his busiest single day since joining Bitwise eight years earlier. Hougan wrote advisors were hard to engage on Bitcoin even with prices near $60,000, and that discussions repeatedly returned to payments, capital markets and tokenized versions of stocks and bonds.

Data from analytics firm Artemis shows references to stablecoins in corporate filings and investor presentations peaked at about 1,000 mentions in the first quarter of 2026.

Regulatory developments preceded the surge in mentions. On February 19, Securities and Exchange Commission staff said broker-dealers may apply a 2% capital haircut to payment stablecoins, treating them as near-cash. The GENIUS Act of 2025 created a federal category for payment stablecoins. Public comments from regulators and industry executives have frequently addressed stablecoin use.

Usage surveys show institutional uptake of stablecoins for payments. A March 2025 survey by Fireblocks of 295 finance executives found 49% of institutional respondents were already using stablecoins for payments.

Hougan wrote that if financial advisors become the marginal net buyers in a future cycle, capital flows might first target stablecoin- and tokenization-linked investments and the rails that support them. He named Ethereum and Solana as likely tokenization rails and cited Circle and Coinbase as firms tied to stablecoin and custody infrastructure.

Artemis flagged that the peak in public mentions could reflect either saturated corporate communications or a shift from planning to implementation of tokenization and stablecoin services. The Investment Adviser Association reports financial advisors manage more than $175 trillion in client assets. Analysts will examine second-quarter filings to see whether stablecoin references retreat from the Q1 level or remain elevated.

Hougan included this sentence in the memo: “If you think financial advisors are the marginal net buyer of crypto in the next cycle, the first place money would flow might be into stablecoin- and tokenization-linked investments.”