Bitcoin’s milestone week comes as new crypto exchange-traded funds are hitting the market.

Investor and best-selling personal finance author Ric Edelman thinks the rollout gives investors more access to upside.

He finds buffer ETFs and yield ETFs particularly exciting.

“You can now invest in bitcoin ETFs that protect you against the downside volatility while preserving your ability to enjoy the upside profits,” Edelman told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.” You can generate massive amounts of yield, much more than you can in the stock market.”

Edelman is the founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, which educates financial advisors on cryptocurrencies. He is also in Barron’s Financial Advisor Hall of Fame.

“Crypto is meant to be a long-term hold, just like the stock market,” said Edelman. “It’s meant to diversify the portfolio.”

His thoughts came as a bitcoin rally got underway. The cryptocurrency crossed $100,000 on Thursday for the first time since February. As of Friday’s close on Wall Street, bitcoin gained 6% this week. It is now up almost 10% so far this month.

However, Edelman sees problems when it comes to leverage and inverse bitcoin ETFs. He warned that not all crypto ETFs are appropriate for retail investors, suggesting most don’t understand how they work.

During the same interview, “ETF Edge” host Bob Pisani referenced 2x Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITX) as an example of a leveraged bitcoin product that includes daily fees and resets.

The fund is beating bitcoin this week, jumping more than 12%. So far this month, the ETF is up 19%. But the BITX is underperforming bitcoin this year. It is up about 1.5%, while bitcoin is up roughly 10%.

Volatility Shares is the ETF provider behind BITX.

The company writes on its website: “The Fund is not suitable for all investors … An investor in the Fund could potentially lose the full value of their investment within a single day.”

One of the most recognized names in personal finance is urging Americans to increase their financial literacy, and urging the country to do a better job of providing the education. 

“We spend a lot of time trying to improve financial literacy. We stink at it,” said Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, on this week’s CNBC “ETF Edge.”

Edelman believes the problem is rooted in the fact the U.S. has never had a great tradition of encouraging smart personal finance, and he says it has never been more important to fix, given how long people are now living. That increases the risks related to running out of money later in life and creates serious questions about standard investing models for long-term financial security, such as the 60-40 stock and bond portfolio.

“We are the first generation, as baby boomers, that will live long lives as part of the norm,” Edelman said. “Everyone before us, our parents and grandparents mostly died in their 50s and 60s. You didn’t have to plan for the future, because you weren’t going to have one,” he added.

One of his biggest concerns with the current generation of young investors is that they seem to believe in get-rich-quick schemes. Many of the new investing websites have been too encouraging of risky strategies that lure young investors in, he says, promoting financial gambling rather than investing. Options and zero-day options have become a significant part of the daily trading landscape in the last several years. According to data from the New York Stock Exchange, the percent of retail traders participating in the options market approached the 50% mark in 2022. In 2024, options volume hit an all-time record.

Edelman says younger generations should be wary of a corporate America that makes consumer finance more complicated than it should be, which includes the manufacturing of overly sophisticated and expensive financial products. “They want to make it complex, to make you a hostage rather than a customer,” he said. 

He also cautions young investors to make sure they are getting information about personal finance from credible sources. “When so many are getting their financial education from TikTok, that’s a little scary,” he said.

Edelman believes the cards are stacked against young investors because of the lack of high schools mandating a course in personal finance. “The only way we discover the issues of money is through the school of hard knocks as adults, and we’re over our heads when it comes to buying a car, getting a mortgage, insurance and saving for college” he said. 

That situation is improving for the next generations of adults. Utah was the first state to require a personal finance course for high school graduation in 2004, and the list grew to include 11 states by 2021. As of this year, 27 states now require high school students to take a semester-long personal finance course for graduation, according to Next Gen Personal Finance. 

Another big challenge for young investors is they often don’t have a lot of money to invest, with many recent college graduates struggling to pay bills and left with little to put towards other financial goals. But there is at least one reason to be hopeful about younger Americans, Edelman says: they are highly motivated to reach financial success.

“Today’s youth looks at their parents and sees how poorly they were prepared for retirement. They don’t want that to be their future” he said.

Anacortes, a small coastal town in Washington state, typically bustles with tourists during the summer months.

But local business owners like Kaia Matheny are bracing for less foot traffic — and a financial hit — this year as tensions around trade and concerns about immigration policy push foreigners to reconsider the U.S. as a travel destination.

Matheny is the co-owner of Adrift Restaurant, a nautical themed farm-to-table eatery in downtown Anacortes. The town, a gateway to the San Juan islands, is a two-hour drive south of Vancouver.

She’s seen sales fall amid fewer customers from Canada, which is generally the U.S.’ top source of international visitors. Air and land arrivals from Canadians fell 14% and 32%, respectively, in March compared to the same time in 2024, according to Tourism Economics.

A sharp decline in foot traffic among foreign tourists looks set to persist through summer, data shows. Matheny is “wary” about what that will mean during peak season, which typically kicks off in June.

Tourism “won’t be what it is usually,” Matheny said. “We’ll batten down the hatches and make the best of it.”

Tourism is a big U.S. export: Foreign visitors spent more than $180 billion here in 2024, more than all agricultural exports combined, said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association.

However, international visits to the U.S. fell 12% year-over-year in March, according to Oxford Economics.

It’s not just Canada: Visits from Western Europe, Asia and South America — historically the U.S.’ highest-value travel markets — are also down by double-digit percentages, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

Data suggests the weakness will persist through the summer.

Air bookings for overseas summer travel to the U.S. are pacing about 10% behind the same time last year, according to Tourism Economics, which is affiliated with Oxford Economics. (These were bookings made as of March.)

Canada and Mexico are worse, data show. Summer bookings from Canada to the U.S. are down more than 30%, for example.

“Foreign visitations to the US are the largest services export in the country and the outlook is quickly souring,” Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a research note published in May.

The loss in international tourism is expected to cost the U.S. economy $10 billion this year compared to 2024, said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics. The U.S. Travel Association pegs the potential loss at an even higher $21 billion in 2025, if current travel trends continue.

“It’s alarming,” Freeman said. Many businesses and destinations “count on the international visitor, in particular.”

The tourism pullback appears to be “more a U.S. issue right now” rather than a broad global weakness in travel, since other regions are seeing positive tourism growth, said Lorraine Sileo, senior analyst and founder of Phocuswright Research, a market research firm.

Domestic tourism isn’t poised to pick up the slack — the market was slowing heading into 2025 and the “revenge travel” trend, which had propelled Americans to travel due to pent-up demand after Covid-19 lockdowns, has largely been played out, she said.

“I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom for the U.S. travel industry,” Sileo said. “But it’ll be a tough year.”

For one, President Donald Trump has announced several rounds of tariffs, sparking fears of a global trade war and raising the average import duties to the highest level since the early 1900s.

Trade wars are “intrinsically combative” with the international community, Sacks said.

In early April, China issued a risk alert for tourists heading to the U.S., citing deteriorating economic relations and domestic security. Several European nations also recently issued U.S. travel advisories, citing reasons such as heightened border security and potential issues around travel documents.

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Trump has also drawn the ire of Canadian citizens and lawmakers through repeated suggestions that Canada become the 51^st U.S. state, experts said. Likewise for Greenland, which is part of Denmark.

“Now is also the time to choose Canada,” former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a speech in February. “It might mean changing your summer vacation plans to stay here in Canada and explore the many national and provincial parks, historical sites and tourist destinations our great country has to offer,” he added.

Searches conducted in March and April from Canadians for travel to the U.S. dropped 50% from 2024, according to Beyond, a data provider on the global short-term rental market.

“We saw a nearly immediate drop in Canadian search activity after the tariff news broke back in February,” Julie Brinkman, CEO of Beyond, wrote in an e-mail. “While interest in the U.S. dropped, Mexico saw a 35% increase in searches. That tells us travelers aren’t canceling trips — they’re choosing new destinations.”

Anecdotes on social media support that notion.

“Proud to say we’ve cancelled 3 US based cruises over the next 2 years and instead will be vacationing in Europe and Canada,” one Reddit commenter wrote recently.

Growing concern tied to U.S. immigration policy is perhaps the most consequential development in recent months, experts said.

“Whether fair or not, a perception is taking hold that more people are being detained, more devices [are] being searched and legal travelers [are] being deported back to their origin country,” Freeman said. “That creates a great deal of fear.”

While non-residents account for less than 10% of all U.S. tourism demand, they are far more “lucrative” spenders, Freeman said.

The average overseas visitor spends more than $4,000 per person per visit, eight times more than the average American tourist spends domestically, Freeman said. The average Canadian and Mexican tourist spends $1,200 per visit.