Turning ‘$11K to Half a Billion Dollars From Trading Memecoins’: Tales From a Crypto Wealth Manager

Jake Claver, CEO of Digital Ascension Group, a firm that helps wealthy individuals and their families navigate the world of cryptocurrency, recalls how one of his friends, “a gentleman from Dallas,” turned $11,000 into almost half a billion dollars, primarily from trading memecoins – culturally themed crypto tokens with no real utility whose valuations can fluctuate wildly.

The lucky investor, who was not a client of Claver's firm at that point, managed his own crypto. “He used a sniper bot [automated software that will buy and sell newly listed tokens in milliseconds according to certain parameters] that made him millions from memecoin trading,” Claver said.

Eventually, Claver persuaded his friend to attend one of the registered investment adviser's (RIA) family office events, which led to a portion of the trader’s portfolio being rolled into XRP, the well-established native token of the Ripple network. “We saw a 6x on XRP so he did pretty well,” Claver said. It should be pointed out that Digital Ascension does not work with memecoins.

Several years before, Claver found himself searching for advice on managing his own crypto gains. Specifically, he wanted to explore how best to structure his crypto estate, handle his taxes, carry out succession planning and so on.

But none of the typical wealth advice you find in the traditional high net worth (HNW) space seemed to be available for holders of crypto. After a few useful introductions, Claver consulted with some family offices and saw a glaring advisory gap in the market. This led to the formation of Digital Ascension, and from a standing start, the firm now looks after about $1 billion in crypto assets for wealthy families.

“Asension started taking capital in October last year, and we partnered with Anchorage for institutional custody,” Claver said in an interview. “So, we’ve gone from zero to a billion in all crypto in about one year. We work with 10families, and we have about another 1,500 clients that have somewhere between half a million and 5 million in total portfolio value. And I can confidently say we are the largest RIA in the world for crypto.”

'Very different kind' of wealth management

Ascension takes any private client services that you can think of, and does that for crypto, explained Claver. That includes estate planning, taxes, accounting, bill-pay and everything a family office would provide. This sits alongside wealth management, which includes allocating to various cryptocurrencies, setting up lines of credit and earning returns on assets, but all done in a buttoned-up and regulated fashion – “Not through DeFi [decentralized finance],” Claver said.

“We do it with institutional custody and with insurance on your assets and things like tri-party agreements to mitigate risk of loss,” he said. “It’s very different from the kind of onchain stuff. You can get all the additional assurances you would get from an institution with the benefit of the additional services.”

A crucial component here is custody, courtesy of technology built by Anchorage, one of the first U.S.-regulated crypto safekeeping firms. It was recently selected by BlackRock to look after its crypto ETF assets.

“The institutional custody at Anchorage and sub accounts structure means the client is never a creditor,” Claver said. “These are always your assets. They sit in your account. Effectively, a Schwab account for your crypto is basically what it ends up being.”

This allows for a structure that’s a lot more intricate and nuanced than a few people having keys to some cold wallet (a means of holding crypto assets that stays remote from the harsh winds of the internet).

“You can have beneficiaries on the account such as your spouse,” Claver said. “If you have a trustee that has to sign off — say it’s an asset-protection trust or another type of structure — we can add multiple signers and governance on who gets access to the assets, when, and for what reasons.”

Trading crypto assets prone to periods of intense volatility may not be for the fainthearted, but the industry has amassed monumental wealth for investors in recent years and continues to create more wealthy individuals in each cycle. The global population of crypto millionaires increased by 40% from the previous year to 2025, according to a recent study.

That said, the lack of grown-up advice and basic crypto wealth management — which Ascension is servicing — was highlighted in a recent survey by Swiss software firm Avaloq that found the traditional wealth sector is under mounting pressure to deliver digital assets to wealthy clients. In the UAE, for instance, 63% of ultra-rich investors have switched managers or are considering doing so, according to that survey.

Family-Office Kids

What often happens is the children of ultra-high-net-worth families are the ones educating their elders about digital assets. A generation that grew up with crypto, family-office kids use laptops or phones to purchase large quantities of tokens on exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.

It’s mostly second- or third-generation family office members that Ascension initially speaks with, Claver said, guided via his firm’s social media presence. The next step is to schedule a call with the elders.

“It’s usually a conversation with the matriarch or patriarch and I kind of explain to them that this is the next iteration of the internet, and that there's certain protocols and networks that will be used for public infrastructure, and also how this is kind of a hedge against other positions that they might have,” he said.

Oftentimes, the second or third gen person that's brought the conversation will be given a couple of million dollars to invest in digital assets to see how it works out. Most of the time it's somewhere less than 1%, Claver said.

“If they want to make a large allocation to certain cryptos — bitcoin, Ethereum, SOL, Matic, chainlink, XRP, XLM, HBAR, whatever it is — we help them make that allocation. Or, if they already have those allocations in a cold wallet, and they don't have a continuity plan built around that, then they can put it in institutional custody. Then you get assurances and planning, versus having keys or words written down on a piece of paper that a few people might have and have to reconstitute a wallet every quarter to make adjustments.”

Claver admits things have evolved since the early days of Bitcoin libertarians. Apart from anything else, the demographic of these early holders has changed, with many entering the 40-plus age group. And anyone’s perspective starts to change when they suddenly have a lot of capital to protect, he added.

“If you've got a couple 100 grand, or even a couple million dollars, you may feel comfortable managing the risk associated with that, like cash in your mattress. I get that," Claver said. “But when it becomes $20, $50, $100 million or even a billion dollars, it's a very different animal.”

UPDATE (Nov. 25, 19:00 UTC): Adds clarification that Digital Ascension Group does not work with memecoins, and that the trader alluded to in the intro was a friend of the CEO and not a client of Ascension when he traded memecoins.