Bitwise CIO Says Wall Street Is Bullish on Crypto but Investors Remain Skeptical

Bitwise is a crypto asset manager overseeing about $11 billion in client assets. Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said Wall Street increasingly views stablecoins and asset tokenization as new infrastructure for payments and capital markets. Traditional investors, however, remain influenced by outdated perceptions of crypto as driven by price speculation, creating a gap between institutional positioning and broader market confidence.

In an investor memo dated June 10, 2026, Hougan said he had met with more than 40 financial advisers over the previous week and found that their interest in stablecoins and tokenization had surpassed their interest in Bitcoin. The U.S. advisory industry manages more than $175 trillion in assets. At the time, Bitcoin was down nearly 30% year to date at about $62,500, suggesting that investor attention was shifting from bets on token prices toward practical on-chain applications.