Top Financial Advisor Ric Edelman Recommends 40% Crypto Allocation for Aggressive Investors

One of America’s top investment advisors has called for clients to allocate up to 40% of their portfolios to crypto.

Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, an advisory firm with $300 billion in assets under management (AUM), said that the traditional 60/40 stocks to bonds ratio is outdated and that aggressive investors should allocate 40% of their assets to crypto.

Even conservative investors should allocate 10% and moderate clients should hold 25% of their portfolios in crypto, he said in a whitepaper for the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, a group he founded.

“Owning crypto is no longer a speculative position; failing to do so is,” Edelman said.

“There’s no logic to omitting an asset class that’s outperformed all others for 15 consecutive years and is widely projected to continue doing so for the next decade or more. ​​Historic performance data show that portfolios with bitcoin have generated higher returns with lower risks,” he added.

There are now more than 70 crypto ETF proposals before the Securities and Exchange Commission, with many moving beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum to include coins like Solana, XRP, and memecoins.

Meanwhile, institutional and wealthy investors are now the biggest owners of Bitcoin ETFs, with more than $20 billion invested.

Conflict of Interest

Edelman, with 39 years in the financial services field and 1.4 million clients, said to financial advisors: “If you’re fearful that recommending crypto could cause a client to fire you, then you’re suffering from a conflict of interest.”

He added that 50% of financial advisors own crypto, but just 20% recommend it to clients.

Edelman has been named the nation’s No. 1 Independent Financial Advisor by Barron’s three times.

“Holy Smokes. This is arguably the most important full-throated endorsement of crypto from the TradFi world since Larry Fink,” said Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s senior exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst. Fink is the chairman and CEO of $11.6 trillion BlackRock, which launched the IBIT iShares Bitcoin Trust, by far the No. 1 Bitcoin ETF with $70 billion in AUM.

Why now?

Edelman cited several factors behind his recommendation, including the growing “internet of money,” which makes it cheap and easy to move funds around the world, and the “transformational impact of stablecoins.”

He also pointed to the Trump administration’s 180 on the regulation of crypto.

Citing President Donald Trump’s promise to “make the United States the world capital of crypto,” Edelman said the “Trump administration has reversed every major anti-crypto policy established during the Biden era.”

Surveys show that Trump’s election has been a turning point for many investment advisors, with more than half of the participants in a January survey of investment advisors stating that it makes them more likely to buy crypto for clients.

Trump is also a major backer of crypto, affiliated with various projects, including World Liberty Financial and its USD1 stablecoin, as well as the TRUMP memecoin.

Edelman said “simple arithmetic” supports the case for Bitcoin at $500,000.

“Bitcoin’s price appreciation isn’t speculation — it’s just supply and demand,” he said.

Top German banking group to offer crypto trading

In yet another sign that financial institutions around the world are warming to crypto, three years after ruling out offering crypto trading to customers, the German Savings Bank Finance Group, the country’s largest financial group, is reversing that stance.

Saying it “will create reliable access to a regulated crypto offering,” the Savings Bank Finance Group explained its change of heart by pointing to the EU Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) crypto regulatory framework and saying that there is demand among its members’ clients for crypto trading.

Developing the framework for such an offering will take about a year, meaning clients could begin trading crypto in the summer of 2026, Bloomberg reported.