A CoinShares survey found that 52% of financial advisors in the UK cannot see most of their clients’ cryptocurrency holdings due to firm-level restrictions.
summary
- CoinShares found that 52% of financial advisors in the UK cannot see most of their clients’ cryptocurrency holdings.
- The survey says company policies, not investor demand, are the main barrier to cryptocurrency oversight.
- Ripple executives and regulators point to growing use of cryptocurrency payments and tightening oversight of digital assets.
According to a poll Released By digital asset investment firm CoinShares on Thursday More than half of UK financial advisers say most of their clients’ cryptocurrency holdings lie outside their scope of vision, even as digital assets become more popular in investment portfolios.
The survey surveyed 261 wealth management professionals across Europe, and found that 52% of UK advisors said the majority of their clients’ exposure to cryptocurrencies was “invisible” to them.
In a wider group of countries studied, including France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, the figure fell to 25%. CoinShares also found that 61% of respondents work for companies that either restrict digital assets or do not have a clear internal policy on dealing with them.
Company policies limit advisors’ visibility
Commenting on the findings, CoinShares co-founder and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said the company’s internal rules, rather than investor demand or advisor knowledge, prevent wealth managers from understanding the full financial situations of their clients.
According to Mognitti, clients have already committed capital to digital assets, but advisors often cannot take those holdings into account in portfolio management because strict policies prevent them from discussing or supervising them. He said this creates what he described as “wrong way risk,” where advisors are expected to manage wealth without access to a full picture of clients’ assets.
Mugnitti also argued that advisors cannot properly allocate investments, manage risk, or build trust unless they first have visibility into those digital asset holdings.
“The capital has already been allocated. The people charged with managing it simply cannot see it, in most cases not because customers are unwilling to participate, but because strict policy prevents them from doing so. This is not a knowledge problem. It is not a demand problem. It is a problem of corporate policy that then turns into a risk in the wrong direction.”
These findings arrive as cryptocurrency ownership in the UK continues to grow. According to the UK Financial Conduct Authority, about 8% of adults in the country own cryptocurrencies as of its December report.
Recently, the regulator proposed allowing licensed investment funds to do so Customize up to 10% From their assets to exchange-traded notes, indicating continued regulatory engagement with the sector.
Payment infrastructure is expanding along with regulation
The survey comes as industry executives continue to say that the next phase of cryptocurrency adoption will be driven by payments rather than speculation.
Ditto I mentioned By crypto.news Ripple CEO Rhys Merrick compared today’s cryptocurrency payments market to the early years of e-commerce, when online shopping represented only a small share of retail activity despite the underlying technology already being developed.
Merrick said improvements such as secure payment gateways, wider internet access, and smartphones have finally made e-commerce a part of everyday life, and he believes scalable blockchains, stablecoins, regulated fiat currencies, and easy-to-use wallets now play a similar role in cryptocurrency payments.
Separately, crypto.news previously reported that Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse He said Stablecoins are attracting increasing interest from corporate finance teams and treasury departments evaluating blockchain-based payment and treasury management systems.
Regulators are also paying close attention to how cryptocurrency transactions move across financial markets. In India, the Financial Intelligence Unit he asked At least three major cryptocurrency exchanges are required to provide records of OTC cryptocurrency transactions exceeding $10,000, with the request covering the data the exchanges must retain from January 2026 onwards.
The directive focuses on private, off-exchange trades, which allow large transactions to avoid public order books but can make verifying beneficial ownership more difficult when intermediaries or close entities stand between exchanges and the original source of funds.
