Jake Claver, CEO of Digital Ascension Group, a firm that helps wealthy individuals and their families navigate the world of cryptocurrency, recalls how one of his clients, “a gentleman from Dallas,” turned $11,000 into nearly half a billion dollars, primarily from trading memecoins — culturally themed, non-volatile cryptocurrencies.
The lucky investor, whom Claver first got to know as a friend, managed his own crypto. “He used a sniper bot [automated software that will buy and sell newly listed tokens in milliseconds according to certain parameters] it made him millions trading memecoin,” Claver said.
Eventually, Claver persuaded his friend to attend one of the registered investment advisor (RIA) family office events, which led to part of the trader’s portfolio being rolled into XRP, the well-established native token of the Ripple network. “We saw a 6x on XRP, so he did pretty well,” Claver said.
Several years before, Claver found himself looking for advice on managing his own crypto gains. Specifically, he wanted to explore how best to structure one’s crypto estate, handle one’s taxes, do succession planning, and so on.
But none of the typical wealth advice you find in the traditional high net worth (HNW) space seemed to be available to holders of crypto. After a few helpful introductions, Claver consulted with some family offices and saw a glaring advisory gap in the market. This led to the formation of Digital Ascension, and from a standing start, the firm now looks after around $1 billion in crypto assets for wealthy families.
“Asension started taking capital last October and we partnered with Anchorage on institutional custody,” Claver said in an interview. “So, we’ve gone from zero to a billion in all crypto in about a year. We’re working with 10 families, and we have about another 1,500 clients that have somewhere between half a million and 5 million in total portfolio value. And I can confidently say we’re the largest RIA in the world for crypto.”
‘Very different’ asset management
Ascension takes every private client service you can think of and turns it into crypto, Claver explained. That includes estate planning, taxes, accounting, billing and everything a family office can offer. This is parallel to wealth management, which includes allocating to various cryptocurrencies, creating lines of credit and earning returns on assets, but all done in a buttoned-down and regulated manner – “Not through DeFi [decentralized finance]Claver said.
“We do it with institutional custody and with insurance of your assets and things like tripartite agreements to mitigate the risk of loss,” he said. “It’s very different from that kind of onchain thing. You can get all the extra assurances you would get from an institution with the benefits of the extra services.”
A crucial component here is custody, thanks to technology built by Anchorage, one of the first US-regulated crypto storage companies. It was recently selected by BlackRock to look after its crypto ETF assets.
“The institutional escrow at Anchorage and sub-account structure means the customer is never a creditor,” Claver said. “These are always your assets. They sit in your account. In fact, a Schwab account for your crypto is basically what it ends up being.”
This allows for a structure that is much more intricate and nuanced than a few people holding keys to a cold wallet (a means of storing crypto-assets that stays away from the harsh winds of the internet).
“You can have beneficiaries on the account, such as your spouse,” Claver said. “If you have a trustee who needs to opt out—let’s say it’s an asset protection trust or some other type of structure—we can add multiple signatories and control who gets access to the assets, when and for what reasons.”
Trading cryptoassets prone to periods of intense volatility may not be for the faint of heart, but the industry has amassed monumental wealth for investors in recent years and continues to create more wealthy individuals with each cycle. The global population of crypto millionaires increased by 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 study by Swiss software firm Avaloq, which found that the traditional wealth sector is under increasing pressure to provide digital assets to wealthy clients. In the UAE, for example, 63% of ultra-wealthy investors have switched managers or are considering doing so, according to the survey.
Family office kids
What often happens is that children of ultra-high net worth families are the ones who educate their elders about digital assets. A generation that grew up with crypto, family office kids use laptops or phones to buy large amounts of tokens on exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.
It’s mostly second- or third-generation family office members that Ascension initially talks to, Claver said, guided via his firm’s social media presence. The next step is to schedule a call with the elders.
“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 this is kind of a hedge against other positions that they might have,” he said.
Often the second or third generation person who brought the conversation will get a few million dollars to invest in digital assets to see how it works. Most of the time, it’s somewhere less than 1%, Claver said.
“If they want to make a big allocation to certain cryptos — bitcoin, Ethereum, SOL, Matic, chainlink, XRP, XLM, HBAR, whatever — we help them make that allocation. Or, if they already have those allocations in a cold wallet and they don’t have a continuity plan built around it, then they can put it in institutional planning and then manage it. or words written down on a piece of paper that a few people might have and have to reconstruct a wallet every quarter to make 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 over 40 age group. And everyone’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 it, like 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.”
