An IMGlobalWealth.news Report
Bitcoin may be well below its record high, but the fortunes built around digital assets have proved surprisingly resilient.
There are now 135,694 crypto millionaires worldwide, including 92,272 whose holdings in Bitcoin alone exceed USD 1 million, according to the Crypto Wealth Report 2026. At the upper end of the market, 290 investors hold at least USD 100 million in crypto assets, while 23 qualify as crypto billionaires.
The figures come despite a substantial correction. The global crypto market was valued at around USD 2.6 trillion as of 31 August 2026, including USD 1.6 trillion in Bitcoin. Bitcoin itself was trading roughly 38% below its October 2025 peak.
Yet this downturn remains considerably milder than previous crypto winters. Corrections following Bitcoin’s 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks each exceeded 75%.
Ownership, meanwhile, has continued to spread. An estimated 742 million people now hold some form of digital asset, including 371 million Bitcoin holders.
Geography Matters Again
The apparent paradox of crypto is becoming increasingly important for wealthy investors: while digital assets can move across borders with relative ease, their owners cannot.
Tax residence, regulation, banking access, succession planning and reporting requirements remain tied to jurisdictions. That is making geography increasingly relevant to investors whose underlying wealth may itself be highly portable.
The Henley Crypto Adoption Index 2026, which compares 36 jurisdictions across regulation, taxation, infrastructure, innovation and adoption, places Singapore first globally for the fourth consecutive year.
The UAE has risen to second, followed by Hong Kong and the US. Switzerland completes the top five.
“As digital assets become easier to move, investors have more freedom to choose where they themselves live, bank and structure their affairs”
Malta ranks sixth globally and records the highest Regulatory Environment score of any jurisdiction in the index. Thailand, the UK, Cyprus and The Bahamas complete the top ten.
The rankings illustrate an increasingly competitive landscape. Dubai established a standalone virtual-assets regulator in 2022, while Singapore regulates digital-asset services through the Monetary Authority of Singapore and does not impose capital-gains tax on individual investors. Switzerland combines its established blockchain ecosystem in Zug with favourable treatment of private capital gains.
Europe has taken a different route. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) became fully applicable in December 2024, establishing a common regulatory framework across the bloc. That reduces the ability of individual EU states to compete through radically different crypto rules, potentially placing greater weight on taxation, residence options and the broader environment offered to investors.
From Crypto Allocation to Jurisdictional Diversification
The development of stablecoins and institutional crypto infrastructure is also making digital wealth easier to transfer and manage internationally.
At the same time, governments are tightening oversight. Seventy-six jurisdictions have committed to the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, with the first exchanges of information among 46 jurisdictions scheduled for September 2027.
That combination of mobility and transparency could prove significant for internationally mobile wealth.
Dominic Volek, Group Head of Private Clients at Henley & Partners, summarises the tension: “Crypto may be borderless, but the families who own it are not.”
Rather than making geography irrelevant, crypto may be doing the opposite. As digital assets become easier to move, investors have more freedom to choose where they themselves live, bank and structure their affairs.
For the emerging generation of crypto millionaires, diversification may therefore increasingly mean more than holding different assets. It may also mean spreading personal, financial and legal exposure across several jurisdictions.
