“One thing that I’m really excited about is the largest wealth management platforms in the US getting comfortable with their advisors and clients accessing Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs for the first time,” Stoddard, head of wealth management platforms and due diligence, said.
Since its founding over a decade ago, Grayscale has been at the forefront of bringing cryptocurrency to mainstream investors. Today, with more than 40 products on its platform and a growing demand for regulated digital asset investment vehicles, the firm is finding itself at the center of one of the most important shifts in wealth management.
Brooke Stoddard, head of wealth management platforms and due diligence at Grayscale, works closely with advisors and institutions. He says the company’s mission has remained consistent: to provide access to digital assets in ways that financial professionals can trust.
“Grayscale has been around since 2013, so we have a 12-year track record in helping investors gain access to the rapidly growing crypto asset class,” Stoddard told InvestmentNews during Future Proof Festival 2025. “We have 40 different products on our platform… Recently, we have just seen an uptick in demand for the types of products that we sell, including Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs, from financial advisors and also their clients.”
Regulatory clarity driving demand
Much of the recent growth, Stoddard said, is rooted in greater confidence from regulators and government policy. “Some of it is regulatory clarity,” he said. “The Genius Act passed in July … it provides a lot of cover and greater confidence for wealth management platforms to say, ‘Okay, look, there is essentially government and regulatory backing for this type of cryptocurrency. We should now feel comfortable going through the due diligence process for Ethereum ETPs, for Bitcoin ETPs, and make those available to our clients who choose to invest.’”
For Stoddard, the shift recalls earlier moments in financial innovation. “The dawn of ETFs 20 years ago… is a good example. The earliest S&P 500 ETF came about in the 90s, at the time financial advisors were hearing about it, but needed to be educated about it. This is something similar to what’s happening with crypto today.”
Grayscale is closely watching regulatory developments, especially around ETFs. “The SEC has demonstrated that they are crypto supportive,” Stoddard said. “That can mean a number of things, but they may become comfortable with different types of ETFs, which would give an opportunity for firms like ours to put new cryptocurrencies into an ETF wrapper. And as we’ve seen… ETFs are extremely popular wrappers for getting access to a lot of different asset classes.”
Ultimately, Stoddard believes the industry is at an inflection point as wealth management platforms begin opening the door to digital asset products. “One thing that I’m really excited about is the largest wealth management platforms in the US getting comfortable with their advisors and clients accessing Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs for the first time,” he said. “These firms may not have allowed access … in the past six months, 12 months, even 18 months. But we’re finding that they’re coming to us and wanting to go through due diligence of these types of products now.”
Leading with education
Grayscale has placed a strong emphasis on education, creating a robust library of research and resources. “We lead with education, and advisors come to us because they’ve heard about crypto,” Stoddard said. “They’re getting a couple of questions about crypto, and they’re looking for educational resources, of which we have an entire library of research and Bitcoin and Ethereum 101 materials to help them better understand these assets.”
The questions advisors bring to Grayscale are wide-ranging. “Sometimes it’s that they want more information about the technology that underlies Bitcoin or Ethereum. Sometimes they want to understand the quantifiable metrics of crypto, meaning how volatile is Bitcoin as an asset or Ethereum as an asset relative to other traditional asset classes,” Stoddard said.
Interest in crypto cuts across all age groups and wealth tiers. Stoddard said, even though you might think only younger advisors who work with next-generation clients are interested, “the accurate answer is, we get questions about every type of advisor and every type of client. Younger clients and their advisors may have been earlier adopters, but wealthier, potentially older clients ask us just the same number of questions about crypto too.”
A turning point
For Grayscale, the opportunity is as much about scale as it is about innovation. “When you look at the wealth category in the US, you’re talking about roughly $30 trillion managed by these large wealth platforms,” Stoddard said.
“If we can, in a reasonable, regulated and crypto-education-first way, help these platforms and their advisors get access to the best Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in the category, that’s the type of work that I want to be doing here [at Grayscale],” he said.