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Four years ago, financial advisor Ric Edelman went out on a limb in saying everyone should hold cryptocurrencies. But how much? Low single digits was his recommendation.

In his “The Truth about Crypto” book in 2021, Edelman said as low as a 1% allocation was reasonable.

A lot has changed.

This week, Edelman said financial advisors should be recommending anywhere from 10% to 40% allocations to cryptocurrencies, and he is aware it’s quite a shift in his own thinking.

“Today I am saying 40%, that’s astonishing,” he told CNBC’s Crypto World in an interview. “No one has ever said such a thing.”

But the “why” is the more important thing.

For one, it’s because of the massive change seen in the industry, what he called “the evolution of crypto in the past four years,” he said.

Four years ago, Edelman said, we didn’t know if governments would ban bitcoin, or if the technology would be obsolete, and if consumers and institutions would adopt it.

“Today, all those questions have been resolved,” said Edelman, who heads the Digital Assets Council of Financial Advisors. “It’s radically changed and is now a mainstream asset.”

For sure, the more mainstream crypto becomes, the more it will feature across investment portfolios. Bitcoin ETFs have been taking in billions this year, among the top asset classes in ETF inflows this year, one sign of crypto’s arrival on the radar of more financial advisors and long-term investors.

The other big shift Edelman sees longer-term, and just as important to his view of crypto allocation, is the end of the traditional 60/40 model of long-term investing, with 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds, which Edelman says is obsolete due to increased longevity, and life expectancy in the U.S., that has risen from 47 in the 1900s to 85 today, and is projected to potentially reach as high as 100 over the next 30 years if technological advances related to medicine proceed. 

“If you’re a financial advisor and you had a 30-year-old client who was saving for their long-term future, you would tell them to put 100% of their money in stocks, because they have 50 years to go,” said Edelman. “Today’s 60-year-old is kind of like yesterday’s 30-year-old,” he added.

“You need to get better returns than you can get from bonds and you need to hold equities longer than ever before,” Edelman said. And as that allocation model shifts away from the classic 40% bond allocation, he said crypto needs to play a much bigger role in investing.

“Bitcoin prices don’t move in sync with stocks or bonds or gold or oil or commodities,” Edelman said. 

He added that investors are starting to recognize it as a “wonderful way to improve modern portfolio theory statistics. “The crypto asset class offers the opportunity for higher returns that you’re likely to get in virtually any other asset class,” Edelman said.

Some analysts predict bitcoin will hit $150,000-$250,000 by the end of this year and $500,000 by the end of this decade. Edelman said, “That’s a conservative estimate compared to what others are saying.” 

In other crypto news of note on Friday:

Crypto hacks hit a new record in the first half of the year.  According to TRM Labs, bad actors raked in over $2.1 billion in at least 75 different hacks and exploits, setting a new record. Attacks on crypto infrastructure, like stealing private keys and seed phrases or compromises of front-end software, accounted for over 80% of the funds stolen in 2025’s first half. 

Trump housing advisor tells CNBC about crypto mortgage plan. Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, joined CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Friday to discuss the plan he released this week to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac count crypto as a federal mortgage asset.

Senate targets end of September for crypto bill. Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said at an event on Thursday that legislation to establish rules for U.S. crypto markets will be finished by the end of September.

You can can catch more on those headlines in today’s Crypto World episode above.

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Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns after viral Coldplay kiss-cam controversy

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Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns after viral Coldplay kiss-cam controversy

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 12, 2021 in London, England.

Simone Joyner | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Astronomer, the technology company that faced backlash after its CEO was allegedly caught in an affair at a Coldplay concert, said the CEO has resigned, the company announced Saturday.

“Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted,” the company said in a statement. “The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.”

Byron was shown on a big screen at a Coldplay concert on Wednesday with his arms around the company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot. Byron, who is married with children, immediately hid when the couple was shown on screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A concert attendee’s video of the affair went viral.

In May, Astronomer announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

Byron’s resignation comes after Astronomer said Friday that it had launched a “formal investigation” into the matter, and the CEO was placed on administrative leave.

“Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI,” the company said in its Saturday statement. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells an additional $12.94 million worth of shares

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells an additional .94 million worth of shares

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks during a news conference in Taipei on May 21, 2025.

I-hwa Cheng | Afp | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold 75,000 shares on Friday, valued at about $12.94 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Friday’s sale is part of a plan adopted in March for Huang to sell up to 6 million shares of the leading artificial intelligence company. Earlier this week, Huang sold 225,000 shares of the chipmaker, totaling about $37 million, according to a separate SEC filing. The CEO began trading stock per the plan last month.

Surging demand for AI and the graphics processing units that power large language models has significantly boosted Huang’s net worth and pushed Nvidia’s market capitalization beyond $4 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company.

Nvidia announced this week that it expects to resume sales of its H20 chips to China soon, following signals from the Trump administration that it would approve export licenses. Earlier this year, U.S. officials had stated that Nvidia would require special permission to ship the chips, which are specifically designed for the Chinese market.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Huang said during a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing that he wants to sell chips more advanced than the H20 to China at some point.

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Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

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Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish files to go public on NYSE

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Marco Bello | Getty Images

The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.

The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”

A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.

“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.

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The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.

It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.

Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.

Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.

President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.

In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”

Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.

WATCH: Trump’s crypto plan

Trump's crypto reserve plan is 'incredibly bullish' for crypto as a whole, asset manager says

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