Silicon Valley’s Crypto Wealth Concentration #
Silicon Valley has a wealth concentration that’s hard to comprehend from the outside.
The San Jose metro has about 650,000 households. The median income is $153,000. And 38% of households earn over $200,000 a year. That’s roughly 247,000 households.
Nearly four in ten households here make over $200k. Nowhere else in America comes close.
Where Crypto Started Going Mainstream #
This is where it started. Not Bitcoin itself, but the infrastructure that made crypto mainstream. Coinbase launched here. Andreessen Horowitz started funding crypto projects from Sand Hill Road. Half the major protocols have team members in this area.
Crypto ownership in Silicon Valley isn’t 28-30% like the national average. It’s probably closer to 50% among high earners. Maybe higher. These are people who got equity in crypto companies, received tokens as part of compensation packages, or just bought early because they understood the tech.
The result is a lot of concentrated crypto wealth held by people who haven’t necessarily thought through the financial planning side.
About 114,000 households earning over $200k here have no advisor. In a region where crypto holdings are often significant portions of net worth, that’s a real gap.
Where Digital Asset Planning Breaks Down #
Silicon Valley selects for people who can figure things out. Build a company from scratch? Sure. Learn a new programming language in a week? No problem. Master the tax code around digital assets while also running a startup? That’s where it breaks down.
This kind of complexity requires specialization, not just raw intelligence.
Crypto taxes require tracking cost basis across dozens of wallets and exchanges. They require understanding how the IRS treats Staking rewards versus airdrops versus DeFi yields. They require knowing which transactions trigger wash sale considerations and which don’t (and that’s still being debated).
Then there’s Estate Planning. If you die holding crypto in self-Custody, does your family know how to access it? Is your Seed Phrase documented in a way that’s secure but accessible? These questions matter.
Remote Crypto Wealth Management #
You know better than most that geography is becoming irrelevant for knowledge work. Your engineering team is probably distributed. Your investors might be anywhere. Why would your financial advisor need to be local?
The advisors who specialize in crypto work remotely because their clients are global and because the Asset Class itself is global. They’ve built secure systems for communication and document sharing. They’re used to working with busy people who don’t have time for in-person meetings.
What matters is expertise:
- Can they handle cost basis when you’ve used multiple DEXs and bridges?
- Do they understand the tax implications of Yield farming?
- Can they coordinate crypto planning with your equity comp?
- Do they know how to structure Custody for security and Estate Planning?
These questions matter more than whether they have an office in Palo Alto.
Digital Asset Advisory Services #
Digital Wealth Partners focuses on crypto holders and works entirely remotely. If you’re in Silicon Valley with complex Digital Asset holdings, they’re worth talking to. Learn more at digitalwealthpartners.net.
The 114,000 high-income households here without advisors represent a lot of crypto wealth being managed without professional oversight. Some of them have it under control. Many don’t.
