89% Of Family Offices Hold Zero Bitcoin, Even As A Separate Survey Puts Interest At 74%
Two of the biggest names in wealth management surveyed the same population this year and came back with numbers that barely look related. JPMorgan Private Bank found that 89 percent of family offices hold no Bitcoin or crypto exposure at all. A separate BNY Mellon survey found that 74 percent of family offices are either already investing in crypto or actively exploring it. Simply Bitcoin put both numbers to Build with Bitcoin co-host Israel Munoz, who has tracked institutional Bitcoin adoption since 2014, for a read on what the gap actually means.
TWO SURVEYS, TWO VERY DIFFERENT BITCOIN NUMBERS
JPMorgan's 2026 Global Family Office Report surveyed 333 single family offices across 30 countries with an average net worth of $1.6 billion. It found an average crypto allocation of just 0.4 percent of assets, with Bitcoin specifically averaging 0.2 percent, well behind even gold, which 72 percent of the same offices also reported zero exposure to.
BNY Mellon's October survey measured something different: not current allocation, but engagement. Its 74 percent figure covers family offices that are either already invested or actively exploring the asset class, a number that has climbed sharply as custody, compliance and regulated investment vehicles have matured around Bitcoin.
WHY THE RICHEST FAMILIES ARE STILL ON THE SIDELINES
Munoz said the gap between the two numbers is less a contradiction than a snapshot of where institutional Bitcoin actually sits right now. He described sitting with an allocator at a recent industry gathering in Nashville who manages a sizable pool of capital and told him directly that the investment committee overseeing it is mostly people in their fifties and sixties who are not yet comfortable allocating meaningfully to the asset.
Fiduciary duty adds another layer on top of personal comfort. An allocator weighing a position for a multi generation family office is not making a quick personal bet. Every allocation has to clear a committee that, by Munoz's account, is still earlier in its own Bitcoin education than the headlines about institutional adoption would suggest.
THE GAP BETWEEN CURIOUS AND COMMITTED
Munoz's framing was blunt: if 80 percent of family offices are interested but have not deployed capital, that tells you less about today's allocation and more about where the next several years are headed. He pointed to the same dynamic playing out with the Bitcoin ETFs, where billions in headline inflows still represent less than one percent of a trillion dollar plus asset class once measured against total institutional capital in motion.
That framing lines up with the two surveys read together. Small allocation and heavy interest are not opposite signals. They are two measurements of the same slow moving institution: aware of Bitcoin, structurally unable to move on it quickly, and already lining up the research and custody relationships to do so eventually.
WHAT A TWELVE YEAR BITCOINER SEES IN THE NUMBERS
Munoz, who got into Bitcoin in 2014 and has spent years in venture and startup investing since, put his own thesis plainly: Bitcoin is worth roughly twice what gold is as a store of value asset, and gold alone represents a market worth more than twenty times Bitcoin's current size. Closing even a fraction of that gap does not require every family office to convert. It requires the 74 percent who are already exploring to finish the process the 89 percent figure shows they have barely started.
This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.
