Hunter Horsley, chief executive officer of crypto asset manager Bitwise, said the biggest remaining obstacle to cryptocurrency adoption is no longer regulation or market access, but the fact that many prospective investors are simply too busy to act. He made the remarks in a Sunday interview with Wolf Of The All Streets.

According to Horsley, regulation and access no longer rank among the industry's principal concerns. He added that institutions are not waiting on the Clarity legislation before entering the sector. Separately, Bitwise's NEAR exchange-traded fund has drawn more than $50 million in net inflows since its launch in late September.

Busy Investors and Advisor Demand

Horsley said crypto has now encountered the "final boss of reasons" that keep people from acting, and that the explanation is simple: "They're just busy." Crypto spent ten years clearing earlier hurdles, he added. In his telling, problems such as exchange availability and qualified custody have already been solved, leaving investor attention as the industry's binding constraint.

The most common pushback Bitwise hears now comes from financial advisors. Many say their clients are not asking about crypto. Some advisors at large firms still do not know they can access Bitcoin, even though their firms approved Bitwise products more than a year ago — a situation Horsley called "almost hard to fathom." That gap captures the industry's new challenge in miniature: firm-level approval is only the first step, and individual advisors still have to act on it before client portfolios actually change.

The earlier obstacles, he said, included the absence of exchanges, a lack of qualified custodians, and fears of a government shutdown. Investor attention, rather than regulation or access, now sits at the top of the industry's list of challenges, according to Horsley.

In a post on X sharing the interview, host Scott Melker highlighted Horsley's view that institutions are not waiting on regulatory clarity:

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley says institutions aren't waiting on Clarity to go all in on crypto

"I think it's a relevant topic. I can't speak for all of Bitwise. Johanna, our general counsel, has, you know, put some comments out on Twitter. Matt has shared views on this."

"I… pic.twitter.com/z707mQjxRF

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) October 4, 2026

https://x.com/scottmelker/status/2106795365974561137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Horsley added that some advisors who once set clients up with spot Bitcoin or Solana through crypto custodians now want to switch into ETF shares. He said those swaps are due in the third quarter. "Peace of mind, simplicity is the order of the day," he said. For an industry long built on specialized custodians and self-directed accounts, that preference marks a step toward crypto sitting in the same ETF plumbing advisors already use for stocks and bonds.

Price Range Matters for Adoption

On market conditions, Horsley argued that Bitcoin's price needs to rise steadily rather than dip sharply or surge abruptly. Rising prices help Bitwise's sales, but only up to a point, he said, and a balanced market is more conducive to adoption.

A falling market leads many investors to wait and see whether prices will drop further, he explained. A sudden run to $150,000 by the end of October would likewise prompt a pause, as investors would worry that the market had overheated. Horsley described the ideal environment as "positive price performance, not too slow, not too fast, and not too high too quickly," adding that the crypto sector is close to that point at present.

Bitcoin traded near $85,200 on Sunday, up 0.5% over 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around Bitcoin remained in the "bearish" zone, with message volume falling to "low" from "normal" levels over the past day.

Regulation, Clarity, and the NEAR ETF

On the Clarity legislation — the market-structure bill for digital assets — Horsley said, "I don't see any clients or partners waiting for Clarity." The most heavily regulated institutions are moving forward regardless of the outcome, he said.

Clarity "could be an asset if written well," Horsley said, though some use cases would be challenged without it. He also rejected the notion that the space operates without laws or rules, citing the GENIUS Act — the federal stablecoin statute enacted in 2025 — as "ext powerful," and said there is "no stopping this train."

Horsley added that the SEC's proposed custody framework, the rules governing how firms safeguard client assets, does not greatly change how advisors add crypto to portfolios. It would, however, open the door to stablecoin holdings, on-chain vaults, and tokenized assets, with use cases expected next year.

Bitwise launched the Bitwise NEAR ETF (NRR) on the New York Stock Exchange in late September. NEAR is the native token of NEAR Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain. Horsley said the fund sits "squarely" at the intersection of artificial intelligence and crypto, and noted that index products have lagged single-asset funds so far. "The story is just getting started on the index front," he said. The fund's inflows therefore serve as a running gauge of demand for diversified crypto baskets against single-asset vehicles.

NEAR's price rose more than 3% in the last 24 hours.