Jake Claver, CEO of Digital Ascension Group, a company that helps wealthy people and their families navigate the world of cryptocurrencies, recalls how one of his clients, “a gentleman from Dallas,” turned $11,000 into nearly $500 million, primarily by trading memecoins, culturally-themed crypto tokens with no real utility whose valuations can fluctuate wildly.
The lucky investor, whom Claver first met as a friend, managed his own cryptocurrency. “He used a sniper robot [automated software that will buy and sell newly listed tokens in milliseconds according to certain parameters] That made him earn millions from trading memecoins,” Claver said.
Eventually, Claver convinced his friend to attend one of the registered investment advisor’s (RIA) family office events, which led to a portion of the trader’s portfolio being transferred to XRP, the well-established native token of the Ripple network. “We saw a 6x in XRP, so it did pretty well,” Claver said.
Several years earlier, Claver found himself searching for tips on how to manage his own crypto profits. Specifically, I wanted to explore the best way to structure your crypto estate, handle your taxes, conduct estate planning, etc.
But none of the typical wealth advice found in the traditional high net worth (HNW) space seemed to be available to cryptocurrency holders. After some helpful presentations, Claver consulted with some family offices and saw a glaring advice gap in the market. This led to the formation of Digital Ascension and from the beginning, the company now deals with around $1 billion in crypto assets for wealthy families.
“Asension started raising capital in October of last year and we partnered with Anchorage for institutional custody,” Claver said in an interview. “So we’ve gone from zero to a billion across all cryptocurrencies in about a year. We work with 10 families and have about 1,500 other clients who have between half a million and 5 million in total portfolio value. And I can say with confidence that we are the largest RIA in the world for cryptocurrencies.”
‘A very different type’ of wealth management
Ascension takes any private client service you can imagine and makes it for cryptocurrencies, Claver explained. That includes estate planning, taxes, accounting, bill paying, and everything a family office would provide. This is in addition to wealth management, which includes allocation to various cryptocurrencies, establishing lines of credit and obtaining returns on assets, but all in a strict and regulated manner: “Not through DeFi.” [decentralized finance]Claver said.
“We do it with institutional custody and with insurance on their assets and things like tripartite agreements to mitigate the risk of loss,” he said. “It’s very different from the on-chain type of thing. You can get all the additional guarantees that you would get from an institution with the benefit of the additional services.”
A crucial component here is custody, courtesy of technology developed by Anchorage, one of the first US-regulated cryptocurrency custody companies. It was recently selected by BlackRock to look after its crypto asset ETFs.
“The institutional custody in Anchorage and the sub-account structure means the client is never a creditor,” Claver said. “These are always your assets. They sit in your account. Effectively, a Schwab account for your crypto is basically what it ends up being.”
This allows for a structure that is much more complex and nuanced than a few people holding the keys to a cold wallet (a means of holding crypto assets that is kept away from the harsh winds of the Internet).
“You can have beneficiaries on the account, like your spouse,” Claver said. “If you have a trustee who has to sign (let’s say it’s an asset protection trust or another type of structure), we can add multiple signatories and control who gets access to the assets, when, and for what reasons.”
Trading crypto assets prone to periods of intense volatility may not be for the faint-hearted, but the industry has amassed monumental wealth for investors in recent years and continues to create more rich people with each cycle. The global population of crypto millionaires increased 40% from the previous year to 2025, according to a recent study.
That said, the lack of adult advice and basic crypto wealth management, which Ascension services, was highlighted in a recent survey by Swiss software firm Avaloq that found the traditional wealth sector is under increasing pressure to deliver digital assets to wealthy clients. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, 63% of ultra-wealthy investors have changed managers or are considering doing so, according to that survey.
family office kids
What often happens is that the children of ultra-high net worth families are the ones who educate their elders about digital assets. A generation that grew up with cryptocurrencies, kids in family offices use laptops or phones to buy large amounts of tokens on exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.
Ascension speaks primarily to second- or third-generation family office members, Claver said, guided by his company’s social media presence. The next step is to schedule a call with the elders.
“Usually it’s a conversation with the matriarch or patriarch and I explain to them that this is the next version of the Internet, and that there are certain protocols and networks that will be used for public infrastructure, and also that this is kind of a protection against other positions that they may have,” he said.
Often the second or third generation person who started the conversation will be given a couple million dollars to invest in digital assets and see how it works. Most of the time it’s less than 1%, Claver said.
“If they want to make a large allocation to certain cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, Ethereum, SOL, Matic, chainlink, XRP, adjustments.”
Claver admits that things have evolved since the early days of Bitcoin libertarians. Apart from anything else, the demographics of these early holders have changed, with many entering the 40+ age group. And anyone’s perspective starts to change when they suddenly have a lot of capital to protect, he added.
“If you have a couple of $100,000, or even a couple of million dollars, you can feel comfortable managing the risk associated with that, like cash in your cushion. I get it,” Claver said. “But when it becomes 20, 50, 100 million or even a billion dollars, it’s a very different animal.”
