Downtown Josh Brown on bitcoin, wealth management, and the big risk in the market

Episode 27 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on AppleSpotifyGoogle PlayStitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to [email protected].

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Wall Street is embracing crypto one headline-driving development at a time.

From Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley, major banks are moving from exploring the digital asset world to fully operating in it.

Goldman, for instance, announced Friday it would restart its market for non-deliverable forwards tied to bitcoin. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman have said they will offer their wealthiest clients exposure to bitcoin. But one channel that has yet to fully embrace crypto is the independent wealth management market. 

Josh Brown — the brains behind the well-followed Reformed Broker blog — is among the legion of wealth managers who have yet to start advising their clients to buy crypto.

THE SCOOP

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The CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management joined The Scoop to talk about how financial advisors are examining the fast-growing $2 trillion market, why he is skeptical of non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance, and how Covid-19 turned the idea of risk on its head. 

Here's a blurb from the show:

"The most concerning is that what we’ve just witnessed completely flipped the entire concept of risk on its head because we’ve just had the biggest risk in 100 years. We had Spanish Flu 2.0 in the modern era, like traveling three times faster than the 1918 version, right? Like the biggest risk you could think of, millions of people suddenly dropping dead from a global pandemic. It turned out to be one of the biggest opportunities. And you didn’t have to wait three years or eight years like the Great Depression to figure that out. Literally. The stock market fell for 16 days and stopped. Think about that. So what even is risk anymore? What if I tell you the next thing is a nuclear bomb going off somewhere? Dow Jones might go up 50%."
 


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Frank Chaparro is Host of The Scoop podcast and Director of Special Projects. He also writes a biweekly newsletter. Chaparro started his career at Business Insider, where he specialized in the intersection of digital assets and Wall Street, market structure, and financial technology. Soon after joining Business Insider out of Fordham University, Chaparro was interviewing top finance and tech executives, including billionaire Mark Cuban, “Flash Boys” star Brad Katsuyama, Cboe Global Markets CEO Ed Tilly, and New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley. In 2018, he become a sought after reporter in the crypto world, interviewing luminaries such as Tyler Winklevoss, the cofounder of Gemini, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, and Fundstrat head Tom Lee. For inquiries or tips, email [email protected].