- Ric Edelman manages around $287 billion for 1.3 million clients.
- He predicts Bitcoin will return up to tenfold the investment over the next decade.
- Bitcoin’s role as a currency has “failed,” he said.
Ric Edelman is dishing out free financial advice, and it’s making Bitcoin investors giddy.
The founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals said on Thursday that Bitcoin’s profit potential is “massive” and that the cryptocurrency will deliver up to tenfold the return on investment over the next decade.
Other assets will generate meager 5% to 10% gains, he reckoned.
“If you loved it at $126,000, you have to be ecstatic about it at $70,000,” Edelman told CNBC. “Adoption is growing, and that means Bitcoin’s returns are very likely to dramatically outperform any other asset class.”
Today, Bitcoin trades at around $72,000.
Edelman Financial Engines manages around $287 billion for about 1.3 million clients, and among the Main Street investment crowd, Edelman is widely influential.
Edelman has already made some pretty aggressive — and bullish — calls for Bitcoin. One is that investors allocate up to 40% of their portfolio into the asset class. The second is that the top crypto will topple $180,000 in 2026.
Other market watchers say investors would be lucky to see the price climb to $100,000 before the end of the year.
‘Dramatically higher’
Edelman explained why he reckons Bitcoin has the potential to rally tenfold in the upcoming decade.
First, adoption is still in its early innings.
“Less than 5% of the world owns Bitcoin,” he noted. “If you look at other asset classes — stocks, bonds, real estate, oil, precious metals — the adoption rate is dramatically higher.”
That low penetration rate, combined with Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million coins, creates the necessary conditions for dramatic price appreciation as more investors enter, Edelman argued.
Second, longevity. Americans are living longer, and medical innovation will further extend lifespans.
“If you’re alive in 2030, you’re going to live to age 100 or beyond,” Edelman said.
That long-lived reality makes the traditional 60/40 portfolio model, which implies investors should reduce their exposure to equities in their sixties and seventies, “obsolete,” according to Edelman.
Instead, he’s replacing it with 80/20, keeping up to 80% in equities much longer.
“If you’re going to have 70% to 80% of your money in equities, crypto needs to be a much stronger allocation than just one or 2%,” Edelman said. “It needs to be 10 or 15 or 20% for most investors.”
Bitcoin failed
Edelman acknowledged that Bitcoin’s original vision to replace government-issued currencies as a medium of exchange in everyday payments has collapsed.
“That experiment has failed. That’s over. Nobody thinks Bitcoin is ever going to have that role,” he said bluntly.
Stablecoins, for one, have supplanted Bitcoin for moving money around the world, especially in places where local currencies are volatile and subject to wild price movements.
That’s not a bad thing for Bitcoin, Edelman noted, because Bitcoin’s use case can find two spots to shine: store of value and brand dominance.
“It has the biggest, best brand in the world of crypto. It still has the number one market share by a huge amount,” Edelman said.
“Whenever anybody anywhere expresses interest in investing in this asset class, Bitcoin is their first stop.”
Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.