A February JPMorgan survey of 333 single-family offices across 30 countries found that 89% hold no cryptocurrency at all, with an average digital-asset allocation of just 0.4%. The figure undercuts the conviction pitched at this week's Token2049 conference in Dubai, where BingX chief strategy officer Kevin Lee argued that "old money" investors are taking a more durable position in Bitcoin than crypto-native traders.

"They have stronger diamond hands than any of us," Lee said during a fireside chat with Cointelegraph head of multimedia Ciaran Lyons. Lee said his desk works with a steady flow of wealthy family offices and private-bank clients evaluating Bitcoin and other digital assets as additions to multi-asset portfolios, not as speculative positions.

What is Lee's case for old money?

Lee's pitch rests on Bitcoin's market-cap trajectory, which he frames as sufficient to move the asset out of the small-cap speculative bucket. He cited investors who split a fixed slice of a portfolio — for example, 5% in gold and 5% in Bitcoin — to use BTC as a diversifier rather than as a 10x trade.

"They're not looking for it to go 10x in two weeks," Lee said, describing the framing that wealthy clients bring to allocation conversations. He added that the buy-and-hold posture of those clients could make Bitcoin a structural diversifier for a broader investor base.

He also described high-net-worth capital as a largely untapped source of crypto demand, contrasting its patience with the rotation-prone behavior of leveraged crypto-native funds.

How exposed are family offices today?

The JPMorgan numbers sit in tension with the Token2049 narrative. Key findings from the February report:

• 333 single-family offices surveyed across 30 countries
• 89% had no cryptocurrency exposure at all
• Average allocation to crypto and digital assets: 0.4%
• 17% identified crypto and digital assets as a key investment theme

The 0.4% average is a fraction of a typical 1%–5% strategic allocation used for alternative assets, suggesting the institutional gatekeepers of family capital have not yet processed Bitcoin into standard mandate language. Family-office allocations to private equity and real estate typically run between 5% and 15% under industry benchmarks, putting the digital-asset bucket well below the threshold for a dedicated sleeve.

What does the CoinShares survey show?

A CoinShares survey released Monday covered 2,230 investors with at least $500,000 in investable assets. Long-term appreciation and diversification ranked as the leading reasons for holding crypto; short-term speculation finished last. Bitcoin was held by 80% of digital-asset investors in the sample, indicating that ownership concentrates in the largest asset once an allocator does enter the market.

The contrast between the two surveys sharpens the institutional question. Affluent investors who already own digital assets behave like long-term allocators, but the broader family-office universe has not moved past a 0.4% average allocation, and 89% remain on the sidelines.

What is the next datapoint to watch?

The near-term question is whether the Token2049-era rhetoric translates into measurable flows into regulated spot products. With U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs now in their second year of trading and several Asian and Middle Eastern regulators still finalizing family-office disclosure rules, the segment is likely to remain a slow-moving but consequential source of structural demand through 2026.