Caleb and Brown CCO says wealthy crypto clients are going back to basics

The clients at Caleb and Brown have owned blue-chip NFTs, farmed airdrop hype cycles, and tried most of what crypto had to offer over the last decade.

Right now, according to Chief Commercial Officer Jake Boyle, most of them have simplified. They want to stake their Solana, dollar-cost average into a handful of altcoins, and let a personal broker handle the rest.

Caleb and Brown is a crypto brokerage founded in 2016 in Melbourne, Australia, that applies the traditional wealth management model to digital assets. The firm was founded by Rupert Hackett and Dr. Prash Puspanathan and targets high-net-worth individuals who want professional guidance through crypto markets without navigating exchanges themselves. The firm has more than $2 billion under custody and was acquired by Swyftx in July 2025 in the largest crypto M&A deal in Australian and New Zealand history, valued in the AU$100 million to AU$200 million range.

Boyle spoke with TheStreet Roundtable at Solana Accelerate and made the case that the behavior of sophisticated crypto investors is a useful leading indicator for where retail sentiment is heading.

The old-school model, reimagined for crypto

Because Caleb and Brown sits alongside its clients across every stage of the market cycle, Boyle has a front-row view of how high-net-worth crypto behavior shifts over time. The behavior in the most recent cycle has been notably different from previous ones.

Clients who were farming airdrops and buying blue-chip NFTs during the last bull run have largely moved on from those strategies. The hype has cooled, and the capital has rotated.

Boyle described where that capital is going now.

"The market has been flat, so a lot of clients are thinking, how can I safely stake my Solana tokens? How do I dollar cost average some of those more ambitious altcoins?"

How deep do clients go?

Caleb and Brown clients do engage with decentralized finance (DeFi), especially lending protocols, but Boyle's characterization suggests it remains a secondary activity for most. The sophisticated money is not going all-in on DeFi. It is hedging: some on-chain activity, some through regulated institutional custodians.

"In terms of DeFi, there are clients who are lending and providing liquidity in the DeFi sphere, but they're also looking at some of the large institutions out there like your BitGos and your Anchorage and your, you know, some of the more premium lending solutions."

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What this signals

The pattern is worth paying attention to. When even the most sophisticated crypto investors, the ones who have tried everything the market has to offer, are pulling back from speculative plays and focusing on staking and accumulation, it tells you something about where this cycle is in its lifecycle.

These are not newcomers discovering dollar-cost averaging for the first time. These are experienced, high-net-worth investors who farmed airdrops, collected NFTs at the top, and have now decided that the risk-adjusted play is to simplify. Stake. Accumulate. Let a broker handle the execution.

The strategies available to high-net-worth clients through firms like Caleb and Brown are increasingly accessible to everyday investors through platforms that have built similar infrastructure at lower minimums. The behavior at the top of the market tends to filter down. If the smart money is simplifying, it is worth asking whether the rest of the market should be too.