More than half of UK wealth advisors said most of their clients' crypto exposure sits outside their management, with firm policy rather than advisor knowledge or client appetite driving the blind spot, according to a CoinShares survey.

The survey of 261 wealth management professionals across France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom found that 52% of UK advisors report a "management gap" above 50%. Across Europe, that figure stands at one in four advisors.

CoinShares defines the management gap as the portion of a client's digital asset exposure that sits outside the advisor's oversight, such as holdings kept on personal exchange accounts or self-custody platforms.

Firm policy is the driver

The report argues the issue is institutional rather than individual.

Some 61% of advisors work in firms that either explicitly restrict digital assets or provide no clear internal guidance — what CoinShares calls "blocked firms."

In those environments, active recommendation rates fall to 1%, versus 48% in firms with clear internal support. The management gap runs in the opposite direction, rising to 34% in restricted firms versus 4% in supported ones.

"This is not a knowledge problem. It is not a demand problem. It is a firm-policy problem becoming a wrong-way risk," CoinShares co-founder and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said.

The knowledge gap follows the same institutional fault line.

More than three-quarters of advisors who describe themselves as insufficiently informed to advise on digital assets work in blocked firms — professionals, the report argues, who were never trained because their firm never positioned itself to train them.

The unlock is not education

Some 8% of all advisors surveyed reported rising client interest alongside a management gap above 50%. In the UK, that "self-investing signal" rose to 14%, the highest in the dataset and nearly double the European average.

"Every month a firm remains silent, more of its clients' wealth migrates beyond its advice, its visibility and ultimately its economics," Mognetti stated.

What would change it, advisors say, is not education. Client-facing educational tools ranked joint last as a confidence catalyst, chosen by just 9% of respondents. Regulatory recognition of digital assets as a mainstream asset class ranked first at 45%, followed by access to exchange-traded products at 43%.

Both conditions are structural, since neither is something an advisor can create on their own.

The survey indicates a narrow window during which both are arriving. The MiCA transition closes July 1, establishing a single regulated European market.

In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority has proposed allowing authorized funds to hold up to 10% in crypto ETPs. In France, the AMF has opened a review of which assets may qualify for UCITS funds.

However, Italy offers the clearest counter-example. With a permissive retail distribution model built around frequent, direct advisor-client contact, the country records the lowest management gap in the survey at 12%. It’s an indicator of demand converting into managed exposure before it becomes self-directed activity, CoinShares noted.