CoinShares Survey Finds 4 in 10 Bitcoin (BTC) Investors Call Wealth Managers Too Cautious

CoinShares Polls 2,230 Affluent Investors

CoinShares published a survey on Monday, October 5, showing that affluent investors across seven major markets rank their wealth managers as the most trusted source for digital-asset information, even though roughly four in ten advised respondents in four of those markets describe their advisers as overly cautious in a market anchored by Bitcoin (BTC). The report polled 2,230 investors in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland, each with $500,000 or more in investable assets, property excluded. It lands while Bitcoin (BTC) price swings keep volatility the concern that tops the adviser list, a barrier the new data quantifies. Ownership is already broad: between 54% and 70% of respondents, depending on the market, hold digital assets, according to the official report. Appetite runs ahead of that base, with 71% to 91% of current holders planning to add exposure this year, extending beyond passive HODL positions. Confidence lags behind: 88% of holders admit they do not know enough to invest with full confidence. The advisory gap carries a commercial edge. Some 69% of respondents would weigh a move to a wealth manager fluent in crypto, and among holders open to advice, 98% are ready to pay for that guidance. In the United States and the United Kingdom, wealth managers outpace nearly every other information source on trust, by margins of 25 to 30 points. Advisers themselves, in the same release, point to volatility, named by 56%, and crypto's speculative character, named by 52%, as the two main brakes on client appetite, a caution shaped by successive bear market drawdowns rather than by any single exchange event. For the four-in-ten cohort, the frustration is practical: advisers who acknowledge crypto but stop short of recommending it. That trust ranking matters because it routes the same clients back to advisers they currently find too slow.

Firm Policy Keeps Advisers Sidelined

The caution investors report traces directly to firm policy, not to adviser preference. A CoinShares survey of 261 wealth professionals in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the UK, released on June 25, documented the adviser side in detail. The five countries it covers overlap almost fully with the October investor poll, which makes the two datasets directly comparable. The June data showed 61% of advisers employed at firms that either restrict digital assets or provide no clear internal guidance, and active recommendation collapses along that line: 48% at supportive firms against just 1% at restrictive ones. Where firms bar advisers from discussing order types, position sizing or allocation, silence becomes the default product. Visibility is the second barrier. A quarter of advisers reported that over half of their clients' crypto holdings sit outside their field of view, and the UK figure reached 52%. Assets moved to self-custody carry a wallet address the adviser never sees, which keeps the holdings, and the fees that would follow them, outside the firm's perimeter. UK advisers reported the worst blind spot in the sample, meaning a majority of their clients' digital wealth sits effectively unadvised. Advisers named what would most restore their confidence: regulatory recognition (45%) and access to exchange-traded products (43%), the two unlocks they want before they will push allocation. Exchange-traded product access matters because it lets an adviser express a view through a familiar wrapper rather than a self-custodied token. Jean-Marie Mognetti, CoinShares' chief executive, framed the gap as a commercial risk when the June data came out: “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 survey's official release stands behind the warning: in the five markets both polls cover, committed investor demand now runs into the exact internal-policy wall the June data measured.

Demand Meets the Policy Wall

COINOTAG analysis: the two datasets read as one story about timing. The official release behind the October poll states plainly that digital assets are now held by a majority of affluent investors in seven major markets, and the adviser-side data explains who is missing from that picture: the professional layer. Firms restrict what advisers may recommend, advisers lose sight of self-custodied holdings, and clients answer by seeking advice elsewhere, at a price they say they will pay. Until regulatory recognition and exchange-traded product access, the two unlocks advisers named, filter into firm policy, the most trusted channel for digital-asset advice stays underused by design.