Alternative investments can help you get rich. The problem is that they usually can’t help you pay the bills.
From fine wine and art to tokenized real estate and rare books, alternative assets are more attractive than ever. They’re often low-correlation, have a great long-term risk/reward profile, and are scarce assets, benefiting from shrinking supply while growing. One downside is the way alternative investments tie up your money. That’s why a business checking account is vitally necessary.
The Cash Flow Problem with Illiquid Assets
Imagine you just dropped $50k to buy a stake in a luxury Airbnb. The gains? Immense. The lockup? 24-36 or more months. It’s too bad that opportunities wait for no one. That sports memorabilia NFT drop happens. Some music rights acquisition protocol kicks off its Series A. You want in, but what you’ve really got is a very large IOU. Those IOUs are the bane of alt-investing.
Other than public markets, only a few asset classes offer traders and investors liquidity, and even when they do, it is at a brutal cost. This is why good business banking infrastructure doesn’t just hang on to your money. It intercepts the unexpected stops and strategically charts the pieces of the investing universe.
Enter the Agile Business Checking Account
Historically, business banking hasn’t given much thought to the alt-investor. Old products mean high fees, slow settlement times, minimum balances, transaction limits, and no automation. None of those features make sense for someone splitting time across asset classes, platforms, and timelines, and migrating funds accordingly.
A modern business checking account that is built for the digital age can take care of these problems. Coupled with the right fintech solution, you can enjoy on-demand access to your money, sophisticated platforms to manage it, and tested capabilities to support dynamic cash flow.
For example, Bluevine allows you to:
- Earn interest on your working capital
- Pay, transfer, wire, and invoice everything from one dashboard.
- Seamlessly integrate your assets and counters into your money platforms
- Never worry about those maintenance and overdraft fees
The point is to be liquid and ready to move at the drop of a hat. You can pivot, fund, and flex your financial muscles without breaking a sweat.
Why Alt Investors Need a Business Checking Account
Institutional investors have big funds, which means they can stretch their cash much longer. It’s not that individual alt-asset investors don’t have money, but they are usually not as liquid as their institutional counterparts. Now, a business checking account that is too rigid keeps you in the mud, but a checking account that is flexible, automated, and connected to what you are doing with your money? It’s more than just permission for smart investments; it’s a turbo boost.
Think about domain flippers or investors in rare comics. They have cash that often cycles through several platforms on paper, but it syncs up in a weird cadence and in weird pockets on the proverbial wallet. While a normal checking account will make this process slow, a smart business checking account will support it and reduce the duration of their reinvestment cycles.
Bank Smarter, Not Harder
Alt assets are not usually traditional, so why treat them that way by using a traditional banking system to support them? The more logical solution is to have an investing strategy that matches your investment style. That bank’s UX. That means using a modern, mobile-first, fee-light platform that lets you self-govern your control and make real-time investing decisions.
Whether you’re investing in farmland, startups, or music catalogs, you need to be liquid enough to grab the next big opportunity that comes your way without needing to get a traditional loan. A business checking account can help you achieve this without hassles. The account is not only for LLCs or freelancers. The alt investor can use it for scalable and flexible growth.
Keep the Cash Moving
The future of investing is not institutionalized or standardized, and is not one size fits all. While illiquid assets anchor your investment, it is the liquidity that keeps everything moving smoothly. That’s where companies like Bluevine come in to make the process easy, closing the gap between long-term and short-term moves. When your cash is invested, your checking account should be free to provide the liquidity to keep moving.
