Wealthfront cedes to four years of investors clamoring for crypto by taking on expensive third-party vendor that Betterment rules out

Wealthfront came to a fork in the road with two bad options — denying access to cryptocurrency or providing access outside its low-price, ETF-reliant paradigm. It chose the latter for up to 10% of an investor’s holdings.

The Palo Alto, Calif., robo-advisor announced in a company blog post, Jul. 29 it will let retail investors trade two Grayscale mutual funds:  The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE).

Graycale Investments LLC, based in New York City, is engaged in an all-in push to convert its mutual fund to an ETF, and last week it even hired an ETF unit chief –– despite having no exchange traded funds.