A 2026 CoinShares survey of 261 wealth management professionals in Europe suggests many clients already hold digital assets beyond the knowledge of their advisers.
The research, carried out through Citywire Engage, covered France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the UK.
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Its main conclusion is that a sizeable portion of clients’ digital asset holdings remains outside the advisory process.
CoinShares refers to this as the “management gap”, meaning the part of a client’s digital asset exposure that is outside an adviser’s supervision and not visible within the relationship.
Across Europe, 25% of advisers said this gap exceeds 50%, indicating that most of their clients’ digital asset holdings are outside their view. In the UK, the figure was 52%.
The survey found the same pattern in all five markets and across all five adviser positions: lower engagement with digital assets was linked to a wider gap.
The findings indicate that when advisers are able to discuss digital assets with clients, those holdings are more likely to move into managed allocations.
Where such discussions do not take place, clients are more likely to invest independently through exchanges and self-custody platforms not seen by their adviser.
The report identifies firm policy as the main factor behind the gap. It says 61% of advisers work at firms that either restrict digital assets outright or offer no clear internal guidance, which it describes as “blocked firms”.
The survey also found that the knowledge gap followed firm policy rather than causing it.
More than three quarters of advisers who said they were not sufficiently informed to advise work at blocked firms.
When asked what would most improve their confidence to recommend digital assets, 45% cited regulatory recognition of the asset class and 43% pointed to access to exchange-traded products.
Those two options accounted for most responses. Client-facing educational tools ranked joint last at 9%, including among advisers who said they felt uninformed.
CoinShares CEO, co-founder and president Jean-Marie Mognetti said: “The data is uncomfortable, so let us state it plainly. Across Europe, one in four wealth managers cannot see the majority of their clients’ digital assets. In the UK, it is more than one in two. The capital has already been allocated.
“The people entrusted with managing it simply cannot see it, and in most cases not because clients are unwilling to engage, but because firm policy prevents them from doing so.”
