Blockchain technology has revolutionary potential for the world of international commerce, according to a financial advisor.
Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss new developments in the crypto market, as well as the broader implications of blockchain technology in financial markets.
Newer digital assets, like Bitcoin (BTC-USD) are not currently understood well enough among finance professionals, he said. This has led to them missing out on opportunities to improve business practices using the technology.
“Most financial professionals been in business a long time, very successful, very talented, and experienced, but the more experience, the more talent you have, the more professional designations, the more college degrees in this space you have, the more difficult it is to get your head around bitcoin,” Edelman said. “And I use Bitcoin as a proxy for all digital assets. There are thousands of them. And it's important to recognize this is a completely new and different asset class that doesn't have anything in common with anything else we're familiar with.”
Digital assets like bitcoin, Edelman said, are different from stocks, bonds, real estate, oil, gold, and other traditional assets because they are non-correlated. This resistance to larger market fluctuations make them a valuable investment opportunity for investors looking to diversify their portfolios. “It's the first genuinely new asset class in about 150 years,” Edelman said.
Although Bitcoin’s price volatility has been unpredictable, there is enough upside potential in a 1% or 2% allocation in most portfolios, Edelman said. “This can be a materially beneficial way to improve your overall returns over the long term,” he noted.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies aren’t the only potentially groundbreaking instances of blockchain technology, either.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have emerged within the past couple of years as one of the hottest new uses of blockchain technology. NFTs can digitally represent physical, non-fungible assets. They’ve been used to represent assets ranging from music and video games to pictures and art. These assets are then stored as tokens on a larger blockchain.
“Blockchain technology and its derivatives of digital assets and NFTs and CBDCs and tokens… [are] the most impactful commercial innovations since the development of the internet itself,” Edelman said. “This is huge. It's going to have a tremendous impact on global commerce.”
Ihsaan Fanusie is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @IFanusie.
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