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Jake Claver built his fortune in digital assets — now he’s helping family offices solve one of wealth management’s fastest-growing blind spots
Jake Claver is CEO & Principal of Digital Ascension Group and founder of Digital Wealth Partners, a digital-asset-focused RIA, and leads Syndicately. A recognized expert in blockchain and Web3 adoption, he helps family offices reimagine wealth strategy, advising elite clients through a multi-family office model that integrates planning, governance, and next-generation investment frameworks. Jake is a frequent industry speaker, has been featured in major outlets including Bloomberg and MarketWatch, and is co-author of the bestselling book “Wealth in Numbers.” For more, visit jakeclaver.com.
Jake Claver never intended to build a wealth management firm.
Like many successful entrepreneurs, he assumed that once he had created significant wealth, there would be experienced professionals ready to help him protect it. Instead, he found himself navigating one of the biggest financial challenges of his life almost entirely on his own.
After exiting his equity investments in 2020 and moving into cryptocurrency ahead of one of the market’s strongest growth cycles, Claver watched his portfolio grow rapidly. What followed, however, was a realization that surprised him.
His accountant couldn’t confidently explain how staking income should be reported. His estate attorney wasn’t certain what would happen to a cryptocurrency wallet if its owner died. Traditional advisers understood trusts, taxes, and estate planning, but few had meaningful expertise in digital assets. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency specialists understood blockchain technology but rarely viewed wealth through the broader lens of long-term family planning.
“I felt isolated,” Claver recalls. “What should have been one of the most exciting periods of my life became incredibly frustrating because there were very few professionals who truly understood how to manage newly created digital wealth.”
Rather than accepting the gap, he decided to solve it.
Building Digital Ascension Group wasn’t a decision driven by financial opportunity alone. It was a commitment that required years of work and approximately $40 million in investment.
Almost everyone around him questioned the decision.
“My wife, my family, my friends, my business partners — even my mentors — thought it was a mistake,” he said. “They believed I’d already achieved financial success and should simply enjoy it instead of risking everything to build something so ambitious.”
But Claver saw something much bigger than his own portfolio.
“I believe we’re witnessing the largest intergenerational wealth transfer of our lifetime, with digital assets becoming an increasingly important part of that transition. Helping families preserve that wealth became more meaningful than simply keeping my own.”
Today, Dallas-based Digital Ascension Group (DAG) manages approximately $1 billion in digital assets for more than 5,000 families, integrating digital asset management with traditional wealth planning, estate strategy, tax coordination, governance, and succession planning.
Yet despite growing institutional adoption of cryptocurrency, Claver believes many families remain unaware of a significant risk hidden inside their own balance sheets.
The Assets No One Knows Exist
The calls Claver receives rarely happen before a problem emerges. They happen afterward.
A family may have spent decades carefully building a sophisticated estate plan. Their businesses are structured, trusts are in place, and every major asset has been documented.
Then someone remembers that the founder bought Bitcoin years ago.
In one case, Claver worked with a family that discovered a hard drive containing approximately $100 million worth of Bitcoin after the owner’s death. The asset had never appeared on the family’s balance sheet, never been incorporated into the estate plan, and never been disclosed to the family office responsible for overseeing the family’s wealth.
It wasn’t hidden intentionally. It had simply been forgotten.
As digital assets mature, Claver believes these situations will become increasingly common.
Research supports that view. UBS’s Global Family Office Report 2026, which surveyed 307 family offices representing $627 billion in assets, found that only 24% had intentionally allocated capital to digital assets. Meanwhile, research from BNY Wealth suggests that nearly three-quarters of large single-family offices have either invested in or are actively exploring cryptocurrency.
Neither study, however, captures the digital assets that entered a family’s wealth quietly — through an early investment, a founder’s personal holdings, or an inheritance.
Those assets often remain invisible until a significant life event brings them into focus.
That distinction may become increasingly important as Cerulli Associates estimates that approximately $124 trillion will transfer between generations by 2048.
A Different Kind Of Wealth Planning
Only a few years ago, many family offices viewed digital assets as speculative investments operating outside traditional wealth management.
Today, the conversation has changed. Institutional custody has matured. Regulatory oversight has improved. Investment vehicles have evolved. Sophisticated investors now have access to portfolio management strategies that simply didn’t exist during cryptocurrency’s early years.
For Claver, the question is no longer whether digital assets belong in family portfolios. It’s whether families truly understand the exposure they already have.
Every client conversation begins with three simple questions. Where are the assets? What are the tax implications? And if something happens tomorrow, who knows how to access them?
Those questions often reveal challenges extending well beyond investment performance.
A trust may comprehensively address real estate, operating businesses, and brokerage accounts while making no mention of cryptocurrency. If private keys are lost — or if no one knows where they’re stored — those assets can become permanently inaccessible.
Unlike traditional assets, digital assets cannot simply be recovered through legal proceedings if access credentials disappear.
For Claver, succession planning isn’t just about transferring wealth. It’s about ensuring the next generation can actually inherit it.
Looking Ahead
The evolution of digital wealth has introduced a new layer of complexity to estate planning, governance, and family office management.
For Claver, that complexity represents both a challenge and an opportunity. His goal was never simply to build another advisory firm.
It was to bridge the gap between traditional wealth management and the rapidly expanding world of digital assets, giving families confidence that every part of their balance sheet — not just the assets they remember — can be preserved for future generations.
As the largest wealth transfer in history continues to unfold, the greatest risk facing many families may not be market volatility. It may simply be not knowing what they own.