How to Invest in Cryptocurrrency Through The Stock Market

So maybe you want to invest in Bitcoin, but digital wallets, seed freezes, right? There's all these steps you have to go through to actually buy crypto. But what if you could invest in the same way as logging into your brokerage account and buying Apple or Nvidia stock? That right there is the exact pitch that has driven tens of billions of dollars of inflows into crypto funds, indexes, and companies on public stock market exchanges. So there are three very different ways to invest in cryptocurrencies through the stock market. And in this video, I'll be breaking down the pros and cons of each of those approaches. This is not financial advice. This is not a trading or investment video. This is just you want to buy crypto. Here's how you can do that through the stock market so that you can make informed financial decisions about the type of investments that you make. And you can capture some of the upside. And you can potentially capture some of the upside of the cryptocurrency markets if that is the type of investment that you want to make. As far as my background here, I've written three books on cryptocurrencies. I've invested in these things for a while. That said, my general recommendation is to stay the heck away from anything crypto. And that's because these are really speculative assets. And typically, it's insiders or people who have a lot of capital or being in the space for a long time who win. But that said, that is starting to change in large part because of this institutional and this mainstream flow of capital into these kinds of markets. And so again, that's the reason for this video. How can you, if you want to, have access to these kinds of assets? That is the video. Open your notes app, grab yourself a coffee, and let's go. So that said, this video is all about accessing crypto through the stock market. And that makes the sponsor of this video, CleanCore, a perfect fit as it represents one of the biggest names in crypto, but not in the way you might think, and is a publicly listed company on the U.S. stock market. So they have a pretty cool story, and here's the rundown. So you know Dogecoin, right? It started as a meme with a massive community backing it, but involved not just into a joke, but rather the second largest proof-of-work blockchain after Bitcoin, the eighth largest cryptocurrency by market cap at over $32 billion. And it averages over $1.5 billion in daily trading volume, in large part through real payment infrastructure and real world utility. And that is where CleanCore Solutions comes in. Again, it's a public company under the ticker name ZONE, Z-O-N-E, on the N-Y-S-E exchange. And if you're familiar with how strategy, or formerly micro-strategy, works, which we'll mention in just a few minutes here, strategy kind of became the institutional play for Bitcoin. And CleanCore is doing something similar for Dogecoin with one big and really important twist. So first, CleanCore professionally holds and manages Dogecoin holdings at institutional scales. They've already accumulated over 600 million Doge tokens with transparent governance, institutional-grade custody through Bitstamp by Robinhood, and they're aiming to acquire 1 billion tokens, and they recently raised $175 million to help them do this, from companies including Pantera, FalconX, and GSR, so all serious institutional players. And here's the leadership piece that caught my attention. Alex Spiro is the chairman, and that is Elon Musk's personal lawyer. And this guy, Marco, is the CIO, who sold his last company for $270 million. So these are experienced operators building actual financial infrastructure. And that is the key difference between ZONE and a holding asset or company like strategy. When you buy ZONE, you're not just speculating on Dogecoin's price, you're investing in an enterprise that's managing, multiplying, and monetizing the whole Dogecoin ecosystem and currency through their partnership with House of Doge, which is the corporate arm of the Dogecoin Foundation. So they're driving this real-world utility through payment integrations, tokenization platforms, and yield-bearing products. And like so, as the Dogecoin ecosystem grows with real-world adoption, CleanCore's enterprise value grows with it. So owning Dogecoin is owning the currency, but owning ZONE is owning the enterprise that's building the infrastructure, managing the treasury, and driving the utility that makes Dogecoin more than just a meme coin. Now in the theme of this video, it is the first and only official Dogecoin treasury vehicle that you can access through the traditional regulated market that is the NYSE or the New York Stock Exchange. Now to learn more about CleanCore and the official Dogecoin treasury, you can check out their website at this link. And so much love to CleanCore for taking the Shiba Inu mainstream. And that said, let's get back to the video. Okay, so the first way that you can invest or benefit in cryptocurrency through stock markets are direct spot crypto ETFs. And let's break that down. So what the spot part of that means is that this is an asset that tracks the actual real-time price of the cryptocurrency that it represents. And the ETF side of that just means that this kind of asset pulls money from many different investors to go and buy the underlying asset that it represents. So if we had a spot Bitcoin ETF, this would be an asset on the stock market that just directly buys Bitcoin. So if you and me and a million other investors around the world go and buy into this Bitcoin spot ETF, then we're kind of owning a little piece of Bitcoin through the ETF because each share of that ETF will go up or down depending on the price of Bitcoin. So yeah, you're not buying the actual Bitcoin or the underlying asset, but you're buying an asset that directly moves with Bitcoin. And in that way, you can benefit directly from the moves of the asset if you believe in it. Like so, this is the most direct type of way that you can invest in crypto through the stock market. And there have been massive demand for these types of funds over the past year. And three of the biggest are run by BlackRock, Fidelity, and ARK. Now that said, these funds do typically only cover the larger cryptocurrencies. So you're talking like Bitcoin or Ethereum being the dominant two. So you don't get exposure really to some of the smaller, say, altcoins. And for that, we have some of these other methods. Okay, now way number two that you can invest is the picks and the shovels way. And this is like in the California gold rush where yeah, you can go and buy the gold. That is method one. Or you can go invest in the guys who are giving the shovels and the picks to the people who are going to actually dig for the gold. And what that means is it's just the companies that work in the cryptocurrency industry that benefit from increased customer adoption of cryptocurrency assets and tools and platforms. Now I'll give you three big subcategories here. Number one, the miners. Number two, the exchanges. And number three, the believers. And so the miners, and these are companies like Riot and Marathon Digital, are the companies that go and actually mine cryptocurrencies. And that's a whole different subject if you're not familiar with it. But at its core, some cryptocurrencies rely on algorithms like proof of work where new value, new coins come into existence through computational problems that are solved. And so the people who own the compute who can solve those problems get given those coins. And that's how you kind of have this mini like inflationary effect or new supply that comes onto the market. So there's companies that just own warehouses full of GPUs and servers where they mine these cryptocurrencies and get paid really good money to do it. And so the profit of these companies depends on the price of the cryptocurrency minus the cost of electricity, which is a big one, and then just naturally their operations. Now these are typically extremely volatile. So if it's a Bitcoin mining company and Bitcoin goes up 10%, they might go up 30% and vice versa as well. Okay, number two are the exchanges. You've probably heard of apps like Coinbase that let people directly create wallets and invest in cryptocurrencies. What you're betting on here is just are more people going to come and want to invest in cryptocurrencies directly. If they do, these kind of companies will earn more from trading fees and vice versa also applies. And here are some of the big exchanges out there. Okay, now number three are the believers. And in this category, I'm putting companies that believe in cryptocurrency assets. And so they own a lot of them and they essentially become leveraged bets on these underlying crypto assets. Now the famous example here is Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, where all they do is just buy Bitcoin. So yeah, they're a company, but they're essentially a holding company for Bitcoin. And so even though they aren't like an exchange-traded fund, if the price of Bitcoin goes up, they make a ridiculous amount of money and vice versa. So buying into them essentially becomes all about the price of Bitcoin. And that has done really, really well for them over the past few years. But this is also a highly leveraged play. Now on the other side, these companies don't just have to invest in Bitcoin. They can go and buy whatever assets they want. They could buy altcoins, meme coins, or Ethereum and Bitcoin because fundamentally they are companies. They just choose to invest their money in these kind of assets. Okay, those were the first two methods. Number three is a little bit different. And that is the old school way. These represent the first ways in which you as an investor could invest or benefit from crypto through the stock market. And those are futures ETFs. Now these are ETFs again, but instead of investing directly in cryptocurrency assets, they trade futures contracts on these assets, which are essentially bets about what the price action is going to be in the future. And I think the ProShares Bitcoin strategy ETF is the biggest one here. Now these were the first ways in which people could go benefit from say Bitcoin or Ethereum moving up or down over time. But they do have a hidden kind of performance drag, which is that they need to constantly open and close new contracts. And those contracts come with a fee. So even if Bitcoin stayed flat for a whole year, you would likely lose money on your investment in one of these ETFs. And for that reason, these have become largely obsolete in favor of the direct spot crypto ETFs like we just talked about. But they are another valid way of investing in these kinds of assets. And again, they were kind of the OG here. They were the first way in which people could invest. So in summary, if you want to bet on the actual price of a big cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, just go ahead and buy the spot ETFs. That's the easiest way to do it. While if you want to bet on the whole industry or some sub part of the industry like NFTs, which have really fallen out of fashion, or meme coins or altcoins, you can invest in the companies that in turn benefit from the adoption of these assets. And again, you can go for method number three, but definitely less popular or needed nowadays. So there you have it. That is the direct way, the picks and shovels way, and the old school way to invest or benefit from cryptocurrencies through mainstream stock markets. I hope you all enjoyed. I hope you learned something. And I'll see you all in the next one. Cheers.