Registered Investment Adviser (RIA)

A Registered Investment Adviser is a firm or individual registered with securities regulators — such as the SEC or state-level regulators in the U.S. — authorized to provide investment advice to clients in exchange for a fee. An RIA is bound by a fiduciary duty, a legal obligation to act in each client's best interest, which is generally a stricter standard than the suitability standard that has historically applied to some other types of financial sales professionals.

As crypto has become more accessible through regulated vehicles like spot ETFs, a growing number of RIAs have begun incorporating crypto allocations into client portfolios, subject to their fiduciary duty to ensure any such allocation is genuinely appropriate for each individual client's circumstances, risk tolerance, and goals, rather than recommending it as a blanket, one-size-fits-all addition. An RIA recommending direct crypto custody or more exotic crypto strategies faces additional considerations around custody requirements and conflicts of interest beyond what a simple ETF allocation would involve.