The report plays to the argument that in some ways digital assets, for all the controversies around them, continue to go more "mainstream".

(An earlier version of this article appeared on WealthBriefing, sister news service to this one.)

A UK-based family office called Seek Capital intends to boost exposure to digital assets, an example of wealth management organizations moving into the crypto space, a report said. 

The family office, founded by billionaire Simon Nixon, wants to bolster its crypto exposures, Bloomberg quoted Adam Proctor, a managing director at the organization, as saying. It is planning to hire an analyst to focus on the sector, said Proctor, who joined this year from Citi Private Bank.

The article noted that a recent Goldman Sachs survey found that nearly half the family offices it conducts business with want to add digital currencies to their stable of investments, with the closely held firms seeing crypto as a possible hedge for higher inflation and prolonged low interest rates. Almost half of respondents to that Goldman Sachs report said that they are thinking of moving into digital assets such as bitcoin although most are not currently in this space. Their main reason for caution is that they are skeptical of whether cryptocurrencies are a store of value. (Goldman Sachs polled more than 150 family offices.) Separately, a study conducted by Fidelity Investments, published in June 2020, said that 36 per cent of institutional investors, including family offices across the US and Europe, own digital assets; while 40 per cent of them thought that digital assets have a place in their portfolio.

Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego revealed in November that he’s put a chunk of his liquid funds into Bitcoin, the report said. Michael Novogratz and Christian Angermayer’s family office are founders of Cryptology Asset Group, which pledged in June to allocate $100 million over the next two years to crypto-related funds. 

According to the Seek Capital website, Nixon is a founder of the price-comparison site Moneysupermarket.com - a mortgage-listings company. 

The story also speaks to how the world of digital assets is turning increasingly "mainstream," attracting interest from major institutions including JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Julius Baer, Guggenheim Partners, and others. 

The Fidelity Investments study in June 2020 showed that almost 80 per cent of investors “find something appealing about digital assets”. The most appealing characteristics are the lack of correlation with other asset classes, exposure to an innovative technology play and high potential upside.

Among other details, 59 per cent of US investors with exposure to digital assets are invested directly, up from 55 per cent in Fidelity’s 2019 survey. Some 22 per cent of US respondents invested in digital assets have exposure via futures, a substantial increase relative to 9 per cent of US investors surveyed in 2019.