Over half of wealth advisers cannot see what their clients hold in digital assets, with the majority of them working in firms that either explicitly restrict digital assets or provide no clear internal guidance, according to a CoinShares survey.
The study, which surveyed 261 advisers across France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, found many clients are already invested in digital assets.
However, one in four European advisers reports that the majority of what their clients hold in digital assets is invisible to them. The figure is slightly higher, 52%, for advisers in the UK.
CoinShares has dubbed this the management gap: the share of a client’s digital asset exposure that sits outside the adviser’s oversight, unmonitored and invisible to the advisory relationship.
Across all five markets, the survey consistently showed that the less an adviser engages with their client, the larger the gap.
When asked about their attitudes towards investing in digital assets, 40% of advisers that said they feel insufficiently informed to advise clients reported a management gap above 50%. For those that actively recommend digital assets, that figure drops to 10%.
CoinShares’ central finding showed that advisory firms’ policies were the main factor contributing to the gap.
Among the 261 advisers surveyed, 61% work at firms that either explicitly restrict digital assets or provide no clear internal guidance.
Advisers in firms that support digital asset engagement are 4.5 times more likely to recommend than those in blocked firms, and the management gap is 8.5 times larger in restricted firms than in supported ones.
Significantly, engagement intent and client demand are consistent across every policy environment, meaning the firm’s policy on digital assets is often the deciding factor.
As a result of a large number of firms having restrictive policies, more than three quarters of advisers feel insufficiently informed to advise on digital asset investing.
Jean-Marie Mognetti, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of CoinShares, said: “The data is uncomfortable, so let us state it plainly. Across Europe, one in four wealth managers cannot see the majority of their clients’ digital assets. In the UK, it is more than one in two. The capital has already been allocated. The people entrusted with managing it simply cannot see it, and in most cases not because clients are unwilling to engage, but because firm policy prevents them from doing so.
“This is not a knowledge problem. It is not a demand problem. It is a firm-policy problem becoming a wrong-way risk.
“Clients did not wait for permission. Every month a firm remains silent, more of its clients’ wealth migrates beyond its advice, its visibility and ultimately its economics. The advisers who move first will not simply be adding another product to their platform. They will be rebuilding visibility over their clients’ wealth.
“Because visibility comes before advice. You cannot allocate, manage risk or earn trust over assets you cannot see. The firms that recognise this earliest will not just capture a new asset class, they will preserve the advisory relationship at the centre of their business at the dawn of the biggest generational wealth transfer in history.”
The survey identified two factors that would increase advisers’ confidence to recommend digital assets: regulatory recognition of digital assets as a mainstream asset class (45%) and access to exchange-traded products (ETPs) (43%).
Client-facing educational tools rank joint last (9%), chosen least even by advisers who describe themselves as uninformed.
Both these leading catalysts could be in place as soon as next month, with the MiCA transition closing on 1 July 2026, which will establish a single regulated European market. On the product side, the AMF has opened a review of which assets may qualify for UCITS funds.
In the United Kingdom, the FCA has proposed allowing authorised funds to hold up to 10% in crypto ETPs.
