How to Choose a Crypto Family Office

1 min readBy Jake Claver

Settle which of two arrangements is on the table: an office your own family owns and controls, which sits outside the Advisers Act and files nothing, or a firm serving unrelated families, which generally answers to a securities regulator. My view is that the phrase carries no information, so the first useful question is the legal name of the entity that would sign your agreement.

The short version

  • The exclusion is the whole distinction. An office serving a single family “shall not be considered to be an investment adviser” under 17 CFR 275.202(a)(11)(G)-1: no Form ADV, no brochure, no adviser examination.
  • A provider that can solicit you sits outside that exclusion, so it operates under some other status. Find out which on adviserinfo.sec.gov.
  • Ask for the CRD number before you ask for the deck. State-registered advisers, SEC-registered advisers, and exempt reporting advisers each leave a public file of a different size.
  • Fees arrive in layers: the stated fee, custody charges, the spread on execution, and whatever an affiliate earns on a product you are placed in.
  • Exit terms are cheap to settle up front: records format, signer removal, key rotation, and the successor to any entity role the provider holds.

Which arrangement is actually on offer

One phrase covers two structures with opposite consequences. Dodd-Frank carved family offices out of the statutory definition of investment adviser and left the boundary to the Commission (15 U.S.C. § 80b-2(a)(11)(G)), which drew it as a three-part test:

“(b) Family office. A family office is a company … that:

(1) Has no clients other than family clients …;

(2) Is wholly owned by family clients and is exclusively controlled (directly or indirectly) by one or more family members and/or family entities; and

(3) Does not hold itself out to the public as an investment adviser.”

17 CFR 275.202(a)(11)(G)-1(b)

Read those conditions as a filter on the room you are sitting in. Any provider soliciting your family fails at least one, and the Commission said as much on adoption: “The exclusion we are adopting today does not extend to family offices serving multiple families, as urged by several commenters” (SEC Release No. IA-3220, Family Offices, 76 FR 37983).

A firm advising unrelated families for compensation falls back inside the definition and registers, with the SEC or with a state, unless a separate exemption applies. Size decides the regulator: Commission registration is generally available at $100,000,000 in regulatory assets under management, with a band to $110,000,000 and no forced withdrawal until assets fall under $90,000,000 (17 CFR 275.203A-1).

A third status looks like registration and is thinner. An exempt reporting adviser files reports on Form ADV per the form’s instructions rather than registering (17 CFR 275.204-4), so the public file holds no brochure. Only a registered adviser owes you one, delivered before or at the time you sign (17 CFR 275.204-3).

Two details decide whether an office built for one family keeps the exclusion. Condition (2) fails the moment the provider standing it up takes equity, since ownership stays with family clients. And “family member” is itself defined, reaching lineal descendants of a common ancestor no more than ten generations removed, which sets the outer edge of who the office may serve.

Who holds the assets and who can sign

The custody agreement is a separate contract from your engagement, often with a different entity, and you should read it before signing either. Three facts settle most of it: the title on the account and whether the provider appears on it as agent, whether the provider may withdraw, and who sits on the authorized-signer list the custodian enforces. Confirm that last one with the custodian, because the provider’s answer describes intent and the list describes what happens on a Tuesday morning.

Under the Advisers Act, holding client assets or having authority to obtain possession of them is custody, and the definition reaches any capacity giving a firm access (17 CFR 275.206(4)-2(d)(2)). Access to digital assets means key material or a seat in a signing quorum, so “do you take custody” gets answered by the key ceremony rather than the brochure. What qualified custody means narrows the eligible institutions; the custody hub covers the arrangements. Discretion is a separate power: a provider can trade the account without asking and still have no way to move an asset off the platform, so ask about each and test both answers against the signer list.

Every layer of the fee

Ask for one page showing every amount anyone receives in connection with your assets over a year, who pays it, and who receives it. A registered firm has filed most of that already: Item 5 of the brochure covers fees and compensation, Item 10 covers other financial industry activities and affiliations, and Item 14 covers client referrals and other compensation, where a payment from a custodian, platform, or lender surfaces. Compare the page you were handed against the filed version, then ask about anything present in one and missing from the other.

The layers that go uncounted in digital assets are specific. Execution is a price rather than an invoice, so the spread on an over-the-counter fill never reaches a fee schedule. Staking arrangements often take a share of rewards, and custodians bill for holding, for withdrawals, and sometimes per transaction. A pooled vehicle run by an affiliate carries its own management fee on top of yours, which is the layer families discover late. An office your family owns files nothing, so the substitute is an annual accounting of every dollar leaving the entity and every outside payment an employee received.

What ending it looks like

Termination gets settled while everyone is enthusiastic or it gets settled in a bad month. Four things belong in the engagement before anything is funded. Records: which files arrive, in what format, within how many days, since a history living inside a provider’s dashboard leaves with the provider and rebuilding lot-level basis afterward is expensive. Signers: who strikes the provider’s people from the custodian’s authorized list, and how fast. Key material: what the provider holds, whether it rotates without moving assets, and what becomes of backup shards kept for continuity. Entity roles: where the provider manages the LLC holding the wallet, name the successor now, since an entity with nobody authorized to sign cannot move anything.

What I actually see

One phrase gets used for both arrangements inside a single conversation. A family stands up an entity, hires two people, and assumes an outside examiner comes attached because the structure sounds institutional. Nothing files, nobody examines it, and for the first two years the only review is the family’s own, which usually means none.

The name on the pitch deck and the name on the signature page differ. There is a brand, an operating company that signs, an affiliate managing the fund an allocation lands in, and sometimes a fourth collecting something from the custodian. All of it may be lawful and disclosed. What I rarely see is anyone drawing the picture beforehand.

Key access gets acquired at onboarding as a convenience. The provider wants a signing seat so rebalancing does not wait on a principal in another time zone, the seat is granted, and it is still there four years later. Ask a family who holds what today, and the answer often arrives as a guess.

The check I would run. Ask every provider for one page naming each legal entity in the arrangement and its role: which signs your agreement, which appears on the custody agreement, which invoices you, which manages any pooled vehicle you would be placed in, and which employs the individual you have been talking to. Beside each name, its registration status and its CRD or file number. Then verify every name yourself in the adviser database and the state business registry. It costs a firm an afternoon and answers more than a month of meetings.

Where this goes wrong

Selection fails on the paperwork rather than on the pitch.

The specific failures: an engagement signed with a marketing name that appears in no register anywhere. An allocation into an affiliate’s fund, disclosed correctly in a document nobody opened. A senior name who attends the pitch, never appears again, and was never covered by a key-person clause. A signer list at the custodian still carrying an employee who left last year. A signing seat granted at onboarding with no expiry. Reporting that exists only inside a dashboard, so termination costs the family its history. And an office the family owns where the principal is the sole control, so nobody reconciles the administrator’s numbers against the chain.

The decision rule

  1. Get the exact legal entity name and CRD number before the first meeting, then search it on IAPD.
  2. Establish which status applies: excluded family office, state or SEC registered adviser, or exempt reporting adviser, and read whatever file it produces.
  3. Read Items 5, 10, and 14 of the brochure before anyone quotes you a number.
  4. Draw the entity map: who signs, who holds, who invoices, who runs any affiliated product, who employs your contact.
  5. Read the custody agreement, then confirm the account title and signer list with the custodian.
  6. Separate discretion from custody in writing, stating what the provider may do without a fresh instruction.
  7. Settle key access before funding: what the provider holds, at what quorum, and what event rotates it.
  8. Write the ending into the engagement: records format, delivery window, signer removal, key rotation, successor manager.

Where this sits

How much crypto is enough to need a family office comes before this question, due diligence for family offices goes deeper on the checking, and governance covers the period after the hire, when decisions need a record that outlives the people who made them. A trustee running the same search carries an additional duty layer, and the custody hub sits underneath every version of the arrangement.

Selection carries more weight here than it looks, because nobody in the finished arrangement owns the seams. The attorney who drafted the instruments works from the documents, the accountant works from statements and exports, and the institution holding the keys works from an account agreement neither of the others has read. Each engagement stops at its own edge, and the damage collects between them: an authority exercised in practice that no document records, a transfer that served the estate plan and broke the basis trail. Put that to every provider before you choose, and get the answer into the engagement: who owns the reconciliation across the three, in which document, on what schedule.

Sources

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Last updated: 3 August 2026.

This article is general education, not legal, tax, or investment advice. It describes how to verify a provider’s status and does not recommend any firm, office, or provider, and careful selection can reduce certain risks but does not eliminate them. Talk to a qualified attorney about your own situation.

Sources

    Jake Claver

    Written by

    Jake Claver

    Family office professional working on how substantial holdings are held, structured and passed on. Qualified Family Office Professional. Finance degree, University of North Texas. Board member, Arkansas Blockchain Council. Author of Wealth in Numbers and Infinite Banking for Crypto Investors.

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