Why We Built Protocol Wealth for the Onchain Economy

Subtitle: People already earn, hold, invest, borrow, and build wealth onchain. Their financial advice should be able to connect that activity to the rest of their lives.

In 2020, I sold my RIA to start a company that taught financial advisers about crypto and blockchain.

At the time, most of the industry was asking a narrow question: How should an adviser add bitcoin to a traditional portfolio?

It was a reasonable question. But it was not the question that interested me most.

I was more interested in what would happen when blockchain stopped being a small allocation inside the existing financial system and started becoming part of the system itself.

What would financial advice look like when people received compensation in tokens? When they held meaningful wealth in wallets instead of only brokerage accounts? When markets, lending, borrowing, ownership, and settlement increasingly operated onchain?

And who would help the people living through that transition?

The financial life changed before the advice did

The early years of crypto gave advisers plenty of reasons to hesitate. There was extreme volatility, regulatory uncertainty, poor infrastructure, weak controls, fraud, and more than a few ideas that never needed a token.

Some of those problems remain. New ones will emerge.

But focusing only on the failures can obscure what has changed.

People now receive part of their compensation in tokens. Founders and early employees may hold much of their wealth in the protocol or company they helped build. Investors use self-custody and institutional custody. Borrowing, lending, staking, governance, and trading can take place through onchain systems. Traditional assets and financial infrastructure are also beginning to move onto blockchain networks.

This is no longer only a question of whether someone should own crypto.

For many people, crypto is already part of how they work, get paid, invest, and build wealth.

Their financial lives still include familiar goals: paying taxes, buying a home, supporting a family, funding education, protecting against risk, planning an estate, and investing for the future. But the assets, accounts, risks, and operating systems involved may look very different from those assumed by traditional wealth management.

Onchain wealth does not fit neatly into one account

A person with token compensation may have:

• an award agreement and employment terms governing vesting;
• a public token schedule that does not necessarily describe the person’s individual rights;
• tokens that are vested but still locked, restricted, unclaimable, or difficult to sell;
• assets spread across wallets, custodians, exchanges, entities, or jurisdictions;
• tax obligations that do not arrive at the same time as usable liquidity;
• a desire to retain meaningful exposure to the protocol;
• a salary, retirement accounts, company equity, real estate, insurance, and family goals outside crypto.

Each part may have a capable professional or provider attached to it. The problem is that each one often sees only a portion of the financial life.

The tax adviser may understand the reporting issue but not the available market depth. The trading provider may understand execution but not the family’s cash needs. The custody provider may secure the assets without deciding what role those assets should play. A traditional portfolio manager may manage the brokerage account while treating the wallet as somebody else’s problem.

The result is often a series of separate decisions when the person needs one coordinated plan.

Conviction and planning can coexist

The answer is not automatically to sell everything and move the proceeds into a traditional portfolio.

Someone may have strong, well-informed conviction in the protocol they helped build. They may want to hold tokens, participate in governance, stake where appropriate, or retain meaningful exposure to the network’s future.

That conviction deserves to be understood—not dismissed.

But conviction does not eliminate the need to plan for taxes, spending, family goals, liquidity, custody, recovery, or the possibility that a concentrated position behaves differently than expected.

A useful plan can make room for both.

One part of the position may be intended for taxes and near-term obligations. Another may support a home purchase or a broader portfolio. Another may remain invested in the protocol. Future token compensation may require the same decisions again.

The point is not to impose a universal allocation. It is to decide intentionally what each part of the wealth needs to do, which risks are acceptable, who has authority to act, and when the plan should be reviewed.

This is why we created Protocol Wealth

Protocol Wealth was created to connect onchain wealth to the rest of a client’s financial life within one fiduciary advisory relationship.

That can include:

• mapping grant documents, vesting, claims, lockups, restrictions, and expected distributions;
• coordinating tax questions and liquidity needs with the client’s tax professional;
• evaluating market depth, trading venues, OTC execution, settlement, and the difference between a quoted price and usable liquidity;
• designing custody, wallet authority, privacy, and recovery controls;
• evaluating holding, staking, staged sales, hedging, or borrowing when those tools fit the client’s facts and risk profile;
• connecting retained token exposure to cash flow, traditional investments, insurance, estate planning, charitable goals, and family continuity; and
• creating an ongoing policy for recurring token compensation instead of treating each distribution as an isolated event.

Protocol Wealth does not take custody of client assets. We do not ask for private keys, seed phrases, passwords, or recovery material. We do not receive commissions or trading fees for advisory execution. We are compensated by our advisory clients.

The technology and service providers may change. The planning responsibility does not.

Built for an increasingly onchain economy

I do not believe every asset will move onchain tomorrow, or that every person needs to hold digital assets.

I do believe the line between traditional finance and onchain finance will continue to become less useful. A person may have a brokerage account, a private investment, company equity, token compensation, a wallet, and an onchain lending position. Those are not separate financial lives. They are one balance sheet supporting one set of goals.

Financial advice needs to operate accordingly.

Years from now, more advisers will have the systems, training, and infrastructure to work across both worlds. That will be good for clients and good for the profession.

But the founders, engineers, operators, investors, and families managing this wealth today cannot wait for the traditional advisory industry to catch up.

They need help now—with the assets they actually own, the risks they actually face, and the lives they are trying to build.

That is why we built Protocol Wealth.

Protocol Wealth is a fiduciary advisory firm built for complex wealth in an increasingly onchain economy.