Citi Wealth Survey: Only 3% of Family Offices Plan to Add Bitcoin (BTC) Exposure

Family Offices Double Down on Equities

Family offices are more worried about inflation than at any point in this survey cycle, yet they keep buying equities rather than retreating. Citi Wealth's 2026 Global Family Office Report, which polled 351 family offices across 41 countries, found that 63% of respondents named inflation their single biggest concern, a sharp jump from 37% in the 2025 edition. Tariffs, which topped the worry list a year ago at 60%, collapsed to just 18% this time around. Despite the mounting macro anxiety, the fear has not translated into selling: only 12% of the surveyed offices trimmed public equity exposure over the past 12 months, while 46% increased it, and the net rise in equity allocations came in 23 percentage points larger than Citi recorded in its 2025 survey. Looking ahead, a mere 5% of family offices intend to reduce allocations to global developed-market equities over the next 12 months — the bucket that spans everything from US mega-caps to funds like the EWJ ETF tracking Japanese equities. Citi Wealth's own advisory desk offers an explanation: Alexandre Monnier, the bank's head of family office advisory, said family offices have grown more sophisticated and now treat risk management as an active discipline that lets them stay invested through uncertainty instead of retrenching as they historically did. The same equity tilt shows up in wider US household data, where equities now account for 39.9% of household net worth — the largest share on record in Federal Reserve data — while home equity slipped to 19.3% in the same quarter, leaving a 20.6-point gap between the two measures. Inflation fear, in short, is coexisting with record equity commitment.

Digital Assets Draw Just 3% of Planned Adds

Digital assets are the clear laggard in the same dataset. For the year ahead, 37% of the surveyed offices expect to add developed-market equities, while just 3% plan to increase exposure to digital assets — the class whose flagship, Bitcoin (BTC), still changes hands near $84,000. Reduction plans actually outnumber additions: 14% of family offices expect to cut digital asset holdings over the next 12 months, nearly five times the share planning increases. That asymmetry is striking given how few obstacles respondents report. Some 46% told Citi they see no significant barrier to raising digital asset allocations, and the most cited hurdle — a lack of internal expertise, governance frameworks or private key custody capability — was named by only 27%. North American offices flagged that expertise gap most often, at 34%. Citi itself acknowledged that these low barriers have not yet lifted allocations in any meaningful way. For offices unwilling to hold crypto directly, listed proxies exist: MicroStrategy (MSTR), the corporate Bitcoin accumulator, and exchange-traded vehicles route equity-wrapped exposure to the asset — yet the survey suggests family offices are not taking that route in size either, and traditional inflation hedges such as silver (XAG) drew no measurable reallocation. The scale still matters: even modest percentage-point shifts at this wealth tier would represent flows far larger than typical crypto fund raising, so a planned 14% cut, if executed, would be felt. Whether it is will only become clear with Citi's next annual survey. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Greed Index vs. Allocator Caution

Our reading of COINOTAG's aggregate market data sharpens the contrast: the trading volume-backed Fear & Greed Index sits at 71 — Greed — and Bitcoin holds 67.2% of our tracked universe's $2.50 trillion market cap. Wealth managers' caution and retail greed are pulling in opposite directions.