Over steak and wine at a swanky restaurant in downtown Singapore a week after Donald Trump won November 2024’s US presidential election, Gerald Goh pitched a bright future for digital assets to journalists covering cryptocurrencies.
The return to the White House of the former reality TV star, cast as a figure whose policies will usher in a boom for virtual money, has spurred rising bets on the sector’s coins and companies. And for bankers, fund managers and private wealth advisers in the city-state, it has triggered a frantic chase for the rich clients allocating more capital to a reenergized segment of digital finance.
Goh, the co-founder and CEO of Sygnum, a virtual asset banking group serving high-net-worth customers in Singapore, is among scores of crypto executives who have seized the momentum to raise the profile of their services in the region’s financial hub.
“Specifically, in Singapore … investors generally are more positive about incorporating crypto investments as part of their investment portfolios,” Goh told Nikkei Asia. “We’ve already seen in 2024 an improvement in the mood, let’s say, in the sentiment, on the crypto side.”
Following the drastic decline in digital asset prices in 2022 and the toppling of industry names such as FTX, a virtual token exchange, over financial fraud, crypto has staged a dramatic comeback in the past year.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, surged to new highs and cracked the USD 100,000-per coin ceiling for the first time in December. Despite falls early in February, many analysts are predicting further gains in the months ahead.
In Southeast Asia, cryptocurrency-related companies attracted USD 325 million in funding in 2024, a 20% jump from the previous year, according to a January report by Tracxn, which monitors startups and private companies.
While this is slower growth than in the payments and banking tech segments, it still bucks the trend of the region’s broader financial technology scene, which recorded an overall 23% drop last year to USD 1.6 billion in total funding from USD 2.1 billion in 2023, the report showed. Charged by this inflow of capital and growing investor exuberance, crypto players are racing to ride the wave up.
But the path to wealth is not without its challenges. Singapore has a reputation as an Asian virtual currency hub but also has a financial regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which frowns on the enticement of mom-and-pop investors by digital payment token service providers, the term used for crypto companies.
MAS heavily discourages mass marketing of crypto assets to retail consumers. Platforms are thus treading carefully. Professional investors, including the rich, however, are fair game. Many buy major tokens such as Bitcoin and Ether directly, industry players note, often through centralized exchanges, or CEXs.
Crypto data tracker CoinGecko highlighted in a January report that CEXs recorded USD 17.4 trillion in spot trading globally last year—more than double the USD 7.2 trillion volume in 2023.
In a January update, Singapore officials said the number of single-family offices—organizations set up to manage the portfolio of millionaires, billionaires and their kin, exceeded 2,000 at the end of 2024, up from the 1,400 recorded a year earlier.
Lured to the politically stable island nation in recent years from as far afield as China and Indonesia, the expanding network of rich Asians has become a natural hunting ground for players like Sygnum.
Without giving specific numbers, Goh said his firm’s rate for onboarding clients “probably doubled or tripled” the week after Trump’s election victory.
In January the company announced it had achieved unicorn status, crossing the USD 1 billion mark after closing a USD 58 million funding round; its client assets under management topped USD 5 billion.
In September, as the Republican presidential nominee campaigned his way to the White House, Sygnum surveyed 400 respondents from family offices, funds and asset managers across 27 countries, including China, South Korea and Thailand.
Its poll found 57% of respondents in Singapore planned to raise their portfolio allocation for crypto in the next two years, higher than the survey average of 47%.
Sygnum is not the only outfit reporting an eagerness among Southeast Asia’s wealthy to dabble in crypto. Independent Reserve, a token exchange licensed in Singapore, told Nikkei the number of its clients from family offices grew 20% in 2024 compared with the year before.
The platform said there is a mix of first-time investors and existing crypto holders raising their exposure, with clients buying into virtual coins like Bitcoin and Ether, either through family offices or via direct trading on its exchange.
“We’ve seen more interest and inquiries from private bankers and family offices,” the firm’s CEO, Lasanka Perera, said. “The postelection rally and a crypto-friendly administration have raised expectations for constructive US regulations, which could reduce risks and encourage greater participation from wealthy investors.”
From mooting a US strategic reserve for bitcoin to recruiting pro-crypto personalities, such as the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to prop up his administration, Trump’s overtures to the digital asset industry have galvanized the sector, as well as the ambitions of Asia’s wealthy to get even richer on the back of virtual coins.
Aspen Digital, an asset-management tech solutions provider that surveyed 80 family offices, high-net-worth individuals, and asset managers based in Asia in the second half of last year, found 76% of respondents had invested in digital assets, up from 58% in a 2022 poll.
“Digital assets have emerged as an alternative asset class for the private wealth-management industry,” Aspen’s report said. “Several high-net-worth individuals and family offices interviewed have increased their digital asset allocation from less than 5% to over 10% in 2024.”
The contest to manage the rising tide of wealth flowing into virtual tokens is building. Crypto platforms in Singapore are expanding the services they offer high-net-worth clients. Even traditional financial institutions do not want to be left out of the action.
“As competition heats up, we’re exploring new variations of structured notes and options for our clients to rebalance or hedge their cryptocurrency portfolios with better yields,” Patrick Yeo, head of crypto and strategic trading for global financial markets at Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings, told Nikkei. “We’re also discussing with other digital exchanges to list our cryptocurrency structured notes on their platforms.”
DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest commercial lender by assets, operates its own digital token exchange catering to professional investors and private banking customers.
Yeo said wealth clients account for four in five transactions involving crypto options trading or structured notes, with institutional investors making up the rest, suggesting a broader trend of Asian high-net-worth individuals’ mounting exposure to digital assets.
“The US election was a catalyst, with requests for quotes and trading volumes for these options and financial products by wealth clients growing around 20% since the election,” the DBS executive added.
At Sygnum, Goh and his team plan to introduce new yield-generation products this year for the wealthy to get more lucrative returns on their crypto holdings.
Independent Reserve, meanwhile, said it is building its network with private banks and family offices to push its platform to ultra-high-net-worth individuals for digital asset investments.
Euphoria over the crypto boom has made it tempting to overlook the fact that it remains a highly volatile asset class. The rich Asians increasingly getting in on the action also risk significant losses should another massive crash occur in a sector many still see as on the fringe of finance.
“Over the past few years little progress has been made in terms of crypto reaching the level of mainstream acceptance as its proponents would like,” Nicholas Lauw, head of IP and technology for Asia at law firm RPC Premier Law, told Nikkei. “Investing in crypto at current prices isn’t without its risks.”
Analysts watching Trump’s second White House tenure have warned of looming uncertainly to financial markets stemming from the firebrand leader’s policies, and virtual currencies are not immune from this despite expectations of a more crypto-friendly era.
This was highlighted on February 3 when Bitcoin fell to a three-week low and ether, another cryptocurrency, tumbled 24% to its lowest level since early September 2024 on market jitters about a global trade war triggered by Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. Both assets then recovered some of their losses.
“Many high-net-worth individuals have built wealth through traditional sectors like real estate and manufacturing,” Forest Bai, co-founder of crypto venture capital outfit Foresight Ventures, told Nikkei. “The cultural emphasis on wealth preservation can conflict with crypto’s inherent volatility.”
This article first appeared on Nikkei Asia. It has been republished here as part of 36Kr’s ongoing partnership with Nikkei.