We talk to Guardian Bitcoin, a US firm which works with bitcoin users to manage a “multi-signature wallet.” We discuss how cryptocurrencies/digital assets are being handled in ways that high net worth and ultra-HNW clients are more comfortable with. 

(Editor's note: An earlier version of this article appeared last week in Family Wealth Report, a sister news service. While some of the material is specific to the US, how to think about custody and associated estate planning angles of digital assets, are global topics, as we have learned from conversations in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Switzerland.)

The US might once have lagged other jurisdictions when it came to a benign regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, but that has not been the case since Donald Trump returned to power. 

In January 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission scrapped a rule – called SAB 121 – stipulating that companies providing custody of crypto assets for users must treat them as balance sheet liabilities. That rule, in force from March 2022, stymied growth in the market. Banks and other financial services businesses shied away.

That’s no longer true. Today, more than 200 publicly traded companies now place bitcoin on balance sheets, rising from 60 at the end of 2024. In another move, recently updated FASB accounting rules now allow for fair value accounting of bitcoin, improving its financial reporting and corporate treasury management. On 10 June, BlackRock’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund became the fastest ETF in history to surpass $70 billion in assets under management (Source: Coinbase, others) and it is on track to exceed $100 billion by year-end. 

A report by Fidelity Digital Assets in June 2024 noted that from a start point in 2020, a “trend of corporate treasuries allocating to bitcoin has emerged”; it gave the case of business intelligence company MicroStrategy Incorporated (MSTR) which adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve. Companies and institutional investors including Metaplanet (Japan), Strive (US), and Tesla (US) followed in also announcing bitcoin allocations.

With countries seeking to carve out competitive advantages – without hopefully losing regulatory rigour – wealth managers’ clients don’t want to miss out.

An organisation seeking to tap into the mainstreaming trend is Guardian Bitcoin, a US-based firm that works with bitcoin users to manage a “multi-signature wallet,” taking out the risks of single-signature wallets. It also provides services to individual, family and business accounts. The service helps cryptocurrency holders figure out estate planning upfront. 

Guardan Bitcoin has a reporting function, giving details about the health of the wallet and keys, recent transfers, and other key information. It primarily focuses only on bitcoin custody for UHNW and family office clients. 

To drive home its work with family offices and UHNW clients, Guardian Bitcoin is hosting a forum for family offices at a private golf club in Charlotte, North Carolina, on why bitcoin matters to these organisations. Senior figures attending the event include leaders from RIAs overseeing dozens of family offices.

Awareness rising
“Bitcoin awareness is high and increasing. Conversely, bitcoin understanding is still very low. Our service bridges the gap simply and securely, we demystify all things bitcoin,” Scott Dunn, a co-founder of Guardian Bitcoin, told this publication. “Bitcoin as digital bearer asset was designed to be stored in a self-custody manner, no trusted third-party/custodian required.”

Family offices and ultra-HNW people are used to receiving a certain level of service – which is how Guardian Bitcoin seeks to stand apart, he said.

“Our service integrates inheritance planning which has been one of the most overlooked aspects of bitcoin self-custody,” Dunn said. (Dunn bought his first bitcoin in 2013.)

Momentum is continuing in the US market. States such as New Hampshire, Arizona and Texas have passed legislation to establish strategic bitcoin reserves, enhancing local adoption efforts. Some 48 states are advancing bitcoin-related legislation. 

Dunn argued that awareness of the wealth management angles of bitcoin is rising all the time.  

“For example, the largest RIA in the US – Edelman Financial – recently published a white paper that says every investor should allocate 10 to 40 per cent of their portfolio in bitcoin. That said, while the bitcoin exchange-traded funds have shattered growth records in the first 18 months of operating, we are still early when it comes to bitcoin adoption. However, with a 61 per cent compound annual growth rate over the last five years, all the regulatory and macro pieces are in place for bitcoin to reach $1 million-plus by year-end 2030. RIAs and family offices will start allocating more meaningful portions of their portfolio to bitcoin and it will only increase from there,” Dunn said. 

The pattern of sentiment in the wider wealth industry is mixed. For example, earlier this month, Citi Wealth released its 2025 Global Family Office report compiled by the group’s 1,800 family offices worldwide; it struck a cautious note on what family offices think of digital assets in general. "Despite an increasingly favourable regulatory backdrop in the US and a recent increase in cryptocurrency valuations, digital assets were not a priority for most family office respondents (69 per cent) globally. Of the minority, 13 per cent were considering investing but remain in the 'research' phase. Just 15 per cent allocated up to 5 per cent to digital assets. A small handful (3 per cent) allocated 5 to 10 per cent or more, similar to last year," it said. (For the purposes of this article, "digital assets" cross a wider field than cryptocurrencies to include tokens, for example, which are typically referenced to some other asset, such as a fiat currency, gold, or investment stake in private equity, etc.)

Safety in numbers
An important element in bitcoin – as with fiat currencies – is custody. Safe custody might strike some as a dull subject, but there's nothing dull about when matters go wrong and bitcoin keys are lost. A part of how Guardian Bitcoin seeks to differentiate itself is from its custody model.

“We are a member of the client’s wallet, hence the term 'collaborative custody’. However, a client always controls a quorum of the private keys required to move/transact their bitcoin. Clients will possess three of the private keys, Guardian Bitcoin will store a private key for redundancy purposes but cannot initiate a transaction from the wallet,” Dunn said. 

“Finally, there is a configurable platform key for additional redundancy and the convenience of auto-signing transactions that fall within the configurable spending limits determined by the client,” he said. 

It is important, Dunn said, to remember that bitcoin was deliberately designed to remove a need for trusted custodians/third parties. 

“A multi-key cold storage wallet is the gold standard when it comes to storing bitcoin. You have to look no further than the customers of the failed FTX exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried to witness the perils of trusting a third party. Additionally, it is estimated that about $11.4 billion in crypto assets was stolen from exchanges and related platforms over the past five years, with centralised exchanges accounting for 70 per cent of the total losses,” he said. 

Business model
Guardian Bitcoin operates a subscription model, charging an annual management fee, collected quarterly. Fees are paid in bitcoin, not dollars. 

Dunn says the rapid pace of change has been remarkable, and new US and other countries’ regulatory changes will bring more growth. According to Bill Benton, a co-founder with Dunn of Guardian Bitcoin, “the combination of depth of expertise Guardian provides along with high-touch service UHNWI and family offices are accustomed to doesn’t exist in the market today.”

Benton argued that the experience for clients has improved.

“The user experience has improved significantly since the early days of bitcoin. We’ve seen an evolution from paper wallets to single-key hot wallets, to cold storage-based wallets, and now multi-key collaborative wallets with integrated inheritance features in the case of our wallet. Even so, self-custody setups can still be intimidating, especially for those new to bitcoin, and our service demystifies establishing and managing a self-custody wallet,” he said.

Dunn looked back at how far the sector has travelled.

“The first 16 years of bitcoin’s rise from being worth less than $1.00 to ~$115,000 today was driven almost exclusively by retail investors. The SEC’s approval of the spot bitcoin ETFs in January of 2024 ushered in a new era of institutional adoption and we haven’t looked back since,” he added.