# How to Build Lasting Crypto Wealth Using a Multi-Family Office Approach | Jake Claver & Erin Friez - Channel: [Ethereum Denver](https://streameth.org/ethereum-denver) - Date: 2026-03-09 - Duration: 17:24 - Topics: ETHDenver, Crypto, Web3, Blockchain, Event, Conference, ETHDenver 2025, ETHDenver 2024, Bitcoin, Ethereum - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-MYLI4oSajmA - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYLI4oSajmA ## Description πŸš€ Get Ready for ETHDenver 2026! πŸš€ We're already hard at work preparing for next year's biggest Web3 event! Keep your eyes peeled for more info on ETHDenver 2026β€”it’s going to be epic! 🌟 ## Transcript Morning. Appreciate you guys coming out. Uh we got a lot of people here that may know who Aaron and I are. Uh we are the principal and CEO of Digital Ascension Group and we are a multif family office. We specialize in digital assets, provide institutional custody for our clients, do wealth management, estate planning, taxes, all the stuff that you'd think of. So the gentleman up here, I want to start with this. He talked about, you know, swapping between assets to stable coin and then putting that to work and then swapping back. Anytime you're exchanging one token for another, that is a taxable event. So if if you swapped to Morpho to earn yield on your BTC, if you had appreciation on that Bitcoin, you now have taxes on that Bitcoin. Um, not fun. I think it's stupid, but that is the way the tax law works today. We we advocate for a lot of things with the digital chamber and and we try to explain stuff to them. So I'm hoping that we'll get that changed over, but I just wanted to start there. So I think for context, a lot of people raise of hands. You know, how many people here know who I am? Okay, a few a few people do not though. So, let me give you guys some background uh and how we ended up getting to where we are today. Uh and then we will, you know, talk about where, you know, where we're at and then where we're going. So, I got into crypto in 2020. Uh before that, I'd gone to school for finance. Um did not work in the industry at all. Uh worked in sales, did industrial sales, and then started consulting and doing M&A. and I'd saved up money for my wife and I to buy a home, which we still haven't done and I get hell about all the time. Um, so the market fell in 2020 and I didn't even get into crypto originally. I was looking at stocks and what everything that I learned in school like Buffett indicator, sharp ratio, uh, PE ratio, everything was overvalued. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to stay out. I'm going to wait for a pullback. And and we got it right. COVID happened, everything played out. And I didn't get the bottom in the stock market, but I got into Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Tesla. I thought, the world shut down. These are going to do okay. And they did. They rebounded really quickly. And they got back to the same levels where I thought there was risk in the market. And so I thought, all right, well, I better d-risk. And then I got into crypto, right? So, um, watching a debate between Peter Schiff and a Bitcoin guy, and that's when the aha moment happened for me. And I'm sure many people here, you know, you you have listened to something or read something and the the light bulb went off for you on what this technology is and the difference that it makes and why it's an opportunity in the market. So, I rolled everything that I made in stocks over into crypto, took 13 positions, uh, and I did very well in 2021. And I got to the height of the market and I had way more money than I have ever had in my entire life. Um, and I thought, oh no, I don't want to mess this up. And so I started seeking professional help. Like going going to school, I understood I needed a CPA. I needed a tax attorney. I needed an estate planner. And when I went to go look for that, it was crickets. Like I I called over a hundred different firms across the US trying to figure out who to work with. And I whittleled it down to the five people that actually knew what they were doing. So I structured my estate, mitigated taxes, and then I got on social media in 22 and I started talking about what I had done and how I had done it. And many people gave me the deer in the headlights look like what what do you mean you can do this for crypto? There's no regulation. We're just now to the point where we have some regulation coming here in 2026. And so you know with that a few people were nice enough to make some introductions to some family offices. We started consulting for them and then over the last year uh last three years we built out a full end toend service provider uh for high net worth individuals or private clients uh when it comes to crypto. And so in 24 we started taking in uh capital uh as a wealth manager where we have an SEC registered RAIA uh that like actually gives you crypto advice on crypto, a financial adviser you can talk to. Uh and we went from zero to a billion dollars in one year uh under management which is unheard of like does not happen. Um, and that's all crypto, by the way. Like, that is that is people that have crypto that want institutional custody and access to institutional products. So, there's a lot of DeFi out there. Uh, but the deal for me was my wife has no clue on this stuff, okay? Uh, and she doesn't care to. And so, god forbid something happened to me. I wanted to make sure that my assets were held somewhere where she's on the account just like your bank account or your stock account, anything like that. You would want continuity for your family. If something happens to me and it's on a USB drive in a safe at my house and she has no idea how to use the keys or use an exchange or do any of this stuff, it's gone. And we've heard horror stories about this where, you know, people got into Bitcoin early or Ethereum early and then they go to jail or they pass away and their spouse or their family can't access the assets. all of this wealth that they could have enjoyed is now gone. So, we we feel like we bridge the gap there. Uh we have institutional custody at Anchorage. Uh we just formed a partnership with Fidelity for a Bitcoin product. Um over the past five years, that product has generated 38% inind in Bitcoin. So, and we democratize access. Normally, you would need at least $10 million in Bitcoin to be able to even approach the individuals that we partnered with on that. It's only half a million when you work with us, which I know is still a lot of Bitcoin, but it's a step in the right direction, right? So, um, you know, over the past three years, we've grown exponentially. We started with just two or three people and now we have over a hundred people that work for the company. Uh, and a lot of that is due to the wonderful efforts of Aaron Freeze. Um, I this year have stepped back to chairman of the company. I was CEO for a long time. We have promoted Aaron to CEO of the company at Digital Ascension Group. So, congratulations to Aaron. So, Aaron, I I would love it if you would give people an idea of, you know, where we're at right now and then where we're going over the next, you know, three to five years. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Jake. Um, so I want to talk about how to think about crypto investing, right? Everyone in this space probably has a general idea of how they approach this, right? You guys are ahead of the curve. Um, when I think about it, it's really early tech adoption, right? That that's what this is. this is a new tech. This is a new way to think about moving data and moving value in the world. Um, and so there's a the way that you approach investing in the space is about utilization, right? Who's actually solving real world problems? Who's actually driving adoption of of that of that new tech, right? But it's a really nuanced way of thinking about it and you have to understand it. And that is not accessible even to the most um affluent and sophisticated investors typically unless they're in this room, right? Unless they're actually doing the things and getting really curious. Most people don't know how to approach this. If you layer on top of that, how do I hold the hold these assets securely? Which partners should I be thinking about? How do I think about estate planning? How do I think about insurance in this space? Who are the right um, you know, funds that are doing the right things? How do I know I'm not going to get caught in a scam, especially in an industry that's been underregulated or not regulated at all, that's global and there's not a lot of standards across across the the globe for these things. If you add all of that together, this means this is an asset class that while it might be appropriate to have a place in a portfolio for a lot of people, no one's going to know how to approach that. How do you think about this asset class? And what do you do? When you think about traditional finance, you also run into these same problems, right? How do I think about investing in this space? How am I making the right decisions? But you're likely not making those decisions alone. You have a financial adviser. You work with a brokerage uh uh firm. You have a brokerage account that you're likely not managing yourself. You've been put into a model. Your 401k is is, you know, likely tracking a model that's appropriate for your age and for your investment goals and and your your um how riskaverse or risk on you are, right? And somebody's helping you make those decisions. To date, that has not been the case for crypto. You have to make these decisions alone. Your traditional financial adviser won't touch this this asset class. even in the family office space, you likely don't have somebody in the inside of of of that firm that understands this asset class that can make these decisions for you or help you navigate. That is the bridge um that that we're get that we're filling. That is is really where we sit in the middle of this. Um we are a fully um licensed registered investment um adviser. So uh we can manage the entire portfolio and and we do most of you know 99% of our assets under management today are crypto but we can take a full a full portfolio and the advantage to that means we actually fit crypto into your entire financial plan right we think about how it fits into your portfolio. How should you uh allocate to this asset class? We do believe that crypto has a place in most portfolios and we help you think about that in the right way and make the right decisions, find the right vendors and do the right things. Um this has been a a really difficult journey for the last 18 months to get to this place for a number of reasons. Most of which is that no one else is really doing this work in this space. Um and we know that now for sure because the operational burdens that we've had to overcome to get the crypto markets to fit inside of traditional wealth management have been incredible. There was a gentleman last night at at the event that we attended and he equated that to crawling over broken glass and I can attest that that is very accurate. >> Yeah, >> it's uh so raise of hands. How many people like when exchanges comingle your funds with other people? >> Nobody. >> So we don't do that, right? Like that's a big piece of the architecture and the way that we structure this is it's a segregated account in your name insured bankruptcy remote not going to be a Luna or you know a Celsius or an FTX type situation. We have controls in place to be able to mitigate those risk and structure it the right way so you retain ownership and it's separate of everybody else while still being able to participate with the broader community. Um, and these are things like cryptonative people know, right? If you're in this space, you know that that's what you want it to be. Traditional people just roll stuff all up together and it's in an omnibus account and they think that's okay. >> Yeah. Anyway, I'll let Erin continue. Sorry. >> No, that was great. My soap box. >> Yeah. Um, I think the other big piece of what we do is actually provide a human touch, right? Crypto is very digital first. you often don't have any, you know, a trusted partner to call. We provide that human touch. You can pick up the phone and call your advisor, which can be critical. You know, this market is really volatile and it's really, it can be a really trusted um partner for you to call no matter where the market's going. You know, when the market is is is going down, having somebody that you can pick up the phone and say, "How do I think about this? What does this mean for my portfolio?" Um, one of we offer um loans uh to to our clients. We have a lot of really great lending partners. Um, if you if you have loans in the crypto space, uh, outside of having an adviser, likely you've experienced a margin call whenever whenever the the market crashes. Um, in October when the market saw that that really big dip, uh, we actually saw zero uh, liquidations. We were able to meet every single margin call and that is because we were have really good um, relationships with our lenders. We were able to pick up the phone, meet every margin call. We saved our clients $30 million in liquidations that day. Um, and and so it it is it is that human touch. Also, when the markets are doing really well, right? If you've got a lot of unrealized gains, what do you do with those? Do do you sell? When do you sell? Are you bullish on this? Is there tax loss harvesting you can take advantage of? Um should you diversify? Those types of questions. It'd be really great to have somebody that understands your entire financial picture, is a an expert in crypto markets and help you make those th those decisions. It's providing that human touch um to the crypto markets. >> Yeah. Uh again, so a lot of what we've built over the past three years has been very selfish for me. Uh the way that we've structured the fees, the way that we've worked with our partners, like I know what I want this to look like and I could not find anybody else that was doing it the way that I wanted it done. Um and it's been a beating to get it done the right way. Uh but we're continuing to push that direction and and we get a lot of feedback from our clients, right? uh we ask questions, we want to be engaged. If we're falling short somewhere, we want to know. Um but you know, and we want to continue to cultivate that. Um we've got over 3,000 clients today. On the estate planning side, we're somewhere north of 7,000 clients. Uh and it's it's not slowing down. Um it it has been a wild ride even in a bare market to see people being proactive and and getting ahead of the appreciation that you inevitably know is is coming for you in this asset class. Once we get regulation here, it's going to be a Cambrian explosion. And I think there's a few assets that are poised for that even prior to uh the regulatory compliance that we see coming in. So on that topic, Aaron, like what where do you see the firm in the next, you know, two to five years? >> Yeah, really explosive growth. So um one of the things that we're really focused on is how do we get these tools in front of, you know, other financial adviserss, right? I think um when it comes to the wealth management space, I've always thought that this is the missing link in crypto markets. Um I think crypto's always been a little bit upside down. It's been retail first, right? Not institution down, but retail and up. Um and I think that the way that you unlock a lot of liquidity in crypto markets is getting every financial adviser to be able to allocate some portion of their clients portfolios to crypto when it's appropriate and in in the amount that it's appropriate. But how do you do that? For years, there's been education in the space for for financial adviserss. um they've been able to learn about blockchain, learn about crypto markets and how they operate. Um we've gotten a further along with regulatory clarity, so they're able to actually access this market. Um the missing piece has been how do you actually do it, right? If if you have a financial adviser sitting in a traditional firm and they understand crypto, they know that their clients are asking for this and we know that's happening because we have many financial adviserss knocking on our door asking for this. Um, so everyone's asking for it, but you got they actually need the tools to be able to click a button and allocate um and get reporting and billing and all of those things um uh uh done for them. That is what we're that that's that's what we're working on right now is putting all of those tools in front of every financial adviser um in the country and and and helping to really you know create a lot of liquidity across the space. So we expect explosive growth. I mean we've this has all been organic growth to this date. Um I mean truly organic growth. We've done zero paid marketing and we've grown to this point. Um, which means that the market wants this. Everybody w would like to have advice and and somebody to call when it comes to this market and how to access this and how to think about it. So, we expect a lot of really explosive growth. Um, we're we're launching a lot of new products. Um, we we've recently launched um a product specific for retirement accounts um uh that allows you to do some algorithmic trading um within an asset um inside of retirement account. We're looking at international expansion um in the UAE and um at either in Singapore or Korea. So, we've got a lot of really big plans. Um and in the next five years, I expect us to be I mean, we we went to 1 billion in one year. I expect us to 100x the company within the next two to three years. >> Yeah, it's it's going to be a I feel like we're strapped to the back of a rocket. Um and and that's beautiful, but it also comes with a lot of headaches. Uh and you have to be able to meet demand and scale. I I would say two things before we close out here. Um, one, you know, we try to align ourselves with the client. Many people that are a financial adviser do have the ability to get some exposure to crypto today, like they've got the ETFs that they can allocate to. We work with people that want direct exposure, right? So, there's a lot of people that buy paper gold derivatives, right? But we we know where that's going. Uh, and that's why so many people have started to buy physical gold. You want the actual asset. You want the bare asset. And that's what we allow people to do is make an allocation directly to the bearer asset while still getting access to all of these large financial products and institutions in a way that mitigates risks and it's structured the right way and protects you and your family for multiple generations. And that's really where, you know, a lot of my attention and time goes is is how do we make this last for your family for the next 10, 20, 100 years? How do you maintain an allocation to this asset, be able to borrow against it, put it to work to earn cash flow for you? Just like real estate, like the the the analogy that I could give you there is like a lot of people think about taking a heliloc out on a house that's rented out that pays for itself, right? How how do we do that with DeFi inside of an institutional environment and structure that so that the people that are holding these assets have access to those products at scale with the best partners and insurance and all those things. So, that's where I think we're headed over the next three to five years. Uh, and excited to be along the ride with you. >> Same. Let's go do it. >> Appreciate y'all. >> Thank you.