Jake Claver, CEO of Digital Ascension Group, a company that helps wealthy individuals and their families navigate the world of cryptocurrencies, recalls how one of his clients, “a gentleman from Dallas,” turned $11,000 into nearly half a billion dollars, primarily through trading memecoins — culturally themed crypto tokens with no real utility whose valuations can fluctuate wildly.
The lucky investor, who Claver first knew as a friend, was running his own crypto. “He used a sniper robot [automated software that will buy and sell newly listed tokens in milliseconds according to certain parameters] it made him millions from trading memecoins,” Claver said.
Eventually, Claver persuaded his friend to attend one of the registered investment advisor’s (RIA) family office events, which led to the transfer of part of the trader’s portfolio into XRP, the well-established native token of the Ripple network. “We saw a 6x on XRP, so it did pretty well,” Claver said.
Several years prior, Claver found himself seeking advice on managing his own crypto earnings. Specifically, he wanted to explore the best way to structure his crypto wealth, manage his taxes, plan his estate, and more.
But none of the typical wealth advice found in the traditional high net worth (HNW) space seemed to be available to crypto holders. After some helpful introductions, Claver consulted with some family offices and saw a glaring advisory gap in the market. This led to the creation of Digital Ascension, and since the beginning, the company now manages around $1 billion in crypto assets for wealthy families.
“Asension started taking capital in October of last year and we partnered with Anchorage for institutional custody,” Claver said in an interview. “So we went from zero to a billion cryptocurrencies in about a year. We work with 10 families and we have about 1,500 other clients who have between half a million and 5 million in total portfolio value. And I can confidently say that we are the largest RIA in the world for crypto.”
“Very different” wealth management
Ascension takes every private client service you can think of and does it for crypto, Claver explained. This includes estate planning, taxes, accounting, bill paying, and anything else a family office might provide. This falls within the scope of wealth management, which includes allocation to various cryptocurrencies, setting up credit lines and earning returns on assets, but all in a strict and regulated manner – “Not via DeFi”. [decentralized finance]” Claver said.
“We do that with institutional custody and insurance on your assets and things like tripartite agreements to mitigate the risk of loss,” he said. “It’s very different from the chain kind of thing. You can get all the extra assurances that you would get from an institution with the benefit of the extra services.”
A crucial element here is custody, thanks to technology developed by Anchorage, one of the first regulated crypto custody companies in the United States. He was recently selected by BlackRock to manage its crypto ETF assets.
“The institutional custody in Anchorage and the subaccount structure means the customer is never a creditor,” Claver said. “They’re still your assets. They’re in your account. In fact, a Schwab account for your crypto is essentially what it ends up being.”
This allows for a much more complex and nuanced structure than a few people with the keys to a cold wallet (a way to hold crypto assets that stay out of the harsh winds of the Internet).
“You may have beneficiaries on the account, like your spouse,” Claver said. “If you have a trustee who needs to sign – for example if it’s an asset protection trust or another type of structure – we can add multiple signatories and governance around who has access to assets, when and for what reasons.
Trading crypto assets prone to periods of intense volatility may not be for the faint-hearted, but the sector has accumulated monumental wealth for investors in recent years and continues to create wealthier individuals with each cycle. The global population of crypto millionaires grew by 40% between the previous year and 2025, according to a recent study.
That said, the lack of adult advice and basic crypto wealth management – which Ascension serves – was highlighted in a recent survey from Swiss software company Avaloq which found that the traditional wealth sector is under increasing pressure to provide digital assets to wealthy clients. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, according to this survey, 63% of ultra-rich investors have changed managers or are considering doing so.
Children of the Family Office
What often happens is that it is the children of very wealthy families who educate their elders about digital assets. A generation that grew up with crypto, family office kids are using laptops or phones to buy large quantities of tokens on exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.
It’s primarily second- or third-generation family office members that Ascension initially reaches out to, Claver said, guided by his firm’s social media presence. The next step is to schedule a call with the seniors.
“It’s usually a conversation with the matriarch or the patriarch and I kind of explain to them that this is the next iteration of the Internet, and that there are certain protocols and networks that will be used for public infrastructure, and also how that’s kind of a hedge against other positions that they might have,” he said.
Often the second or third generation person who started the conversation will be given a few million dollars to invest in digital assets to see how it works. Most of the time, it’s less than 1 percent, Claver said.
“If they want to allocate a significant portion to certain cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Ethereum, SOL, Matic, Chainlink, on a piece of paper that a few people might have and have to replenish a portfolio each quarter to make adjustments.
Claver admits that things have evolved since the beginnings of Bitcoin libertarians. Regardless of anything else, the demographics of these early holders have changed, with many entering the 40+ age bracket. And everyone’s perspective begins to change when they suddenly have significant capital to protect, he added.
“If you have a few $100,000 or even a few million dollars, you can feel comfortable managing the risk associated with that, like the cash in your mattress. I understand that,” Claver said. “But when it becomes 20, 50, 100 million or even a billion dollars, it’s a very different animal.”
