Reinventing: Blockchain

Asset Management

This article originally appeared in HuffPost on 11/30/2017.

As tokens emerge as a new breed of tangible assets it only makes sense that tools to enable a new breed of asset management would as well. Investment advisors worldwide have been fielding questions from their clients about cryptocurrency, mainly Bitcoin, for almost ten years now.

However, the explosion of interest in the investment vehicle has gone up dramatically in the past year with Bitcoin’s market cap is now more than $100 Billion as of press time. Cryptocurrency is going mainstream; finally, some would say, and asset management is evolving to keep pace. The best asset managers are surely starting to think about how they will make it part of their offering.

Asset management is an art and science. It requires specific knowledge, usually gained through formal education, and licenses needed to practice as well as specialized software tools of the trade. These tools allow investment advisors to perform tasks like compliance management, modeling, scenario simulation, portfolio rebalancing, benchmarking and more. They have involved solutions that allow for thorough and accurate portfolio management, and any sane advisor would never consider writing a proprietary custom software solution to handle all their clients’ portfolios. The barrier to entry is just too high and would require so much work that it’s doubtful they would have time to spend focusing on their real work, their clients’ financial goals.

The same is now true for advisors who wish to begin offering a tokenized fund. To create their own blockchain based application architecture to offer their clients a secure portfolio of digital assets would be unrealistic for most and perhaps unadvised for all. I’m not a financial advisor, and can’t give that absolute advise, but it’s my best guess. :)

This reminds me of the quote from Red Adair, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”

As investment advisors begin to move towards the need for digital crypto asset portfolio management, they will need the right tools to offer their clients the top-tier solutions they expect, and I am happy to share one solution I have discovered that I believe will do just that.

Introducing Blackmoon Crypto

They are going to offer Investment Advisors an opportunity to provide true digital token portfolios, with access to the IT and legal infrastructure they would otherwise not be able to provide without building it themselves. This will give investment advisors and asset managers the ability to focus on their true priority, their client’s portfolios, while Blackmoon takes care of all the rest.

Their platform will provide both the investor and the investment manager with a set of dynamic tools to manage the cryptocurrency portfolio. But also important to note, is that non-crypto (fiat) currencies can be integrated and managed with the software. This provides advisors the ability to design funds that offer diversified income sources while granting valuable access to the cryptocurrency world as well. Instead of one or the other, as is the standard offering today, investors will have the ‘best of both worlds’ using Blackmoon.

This is not trivial. Because their platform will remove the barrier to entry for a tokenized fund creation, investment advisors will now be able to truly help bring the fiat and crypto economies into the same realm for their clients. Also, the standardization of their platform when widely accepted will offer stability and progress in the right direction towards the expected regulations that will be placed upon tokenized funds in the future.

If you are an investment advisor considering offering your clients your own tokenized fund, or an investor interested in Cryptocurrency I highly recommend reading Blackmoon’s white paper. It is the beginning of a new era in digital currency, and understanding the possibilities now could prove to be extremely valuable ten years from now.

They plan to introduce their first fund in Jan. 2018, and it will be exciting to see where things head as they acquire licenses for operation in the EU and US in the coming year. I would love to hear from any investment advisors that plan to use this service, and learn details of the funds of the future