The rest of Grey Crest is built for capital that already exists. Ascent is built for the person whose real asset is the thirty years in front of them — someone who can sit through a decade that a treasurer reporting every quarter simply cannot. Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million and most of it has already been issued; that is a reason to hold it for a long time, and a long time is the thing you have more of than almost anyone. It is still a higher-risk allocation: the worst year in the record below was -73%, and this page is written on the assumption that a year like it comes again.
Said plainly: this is a higher-risk allocation and you can lose the amount in full. The first link is a suitability check rather than a sign-up — it exists to tell some people, possibly you, that this is not for them, and it comes before anything is asked of you. Nothing on this page is a forecast, a guarantee of any outcome, or investment advice.
Every holding period in the 12-year record, annualised. Longer windows narrowed the range — they did not remove the risk. Read the long end carefully: in this sample no window of 3 years or more ended down, so the lower edge above sits in positive territory. That is a fact about 12 years in which this asset rose enormously, not a property of holding — and the 8-year reading is the worst of only 5 heavily overlapping windows. It is not a floor under your money. 12 overlapping years of a single asset is not evidence that a long hold cannot lose money, and the vertical scale is compressed so that both extremes fit on one page. The 2025 return is an illustrative assumption rather than settled data. This is what has happened, not a projection of what will.
Ascent is higher risk than anything else we run. Not “higher growth potential” — higher risk: the value can fall a long way and stay down there for years. Work through this before you look at another number on this page.
0 of 5 required statements ticked
Tick only what is actually true. Nothing here is submitted, sent to us, saved to an account, or recorded anywhere — it stays in your browser and is gone when you close the tab. There is no reason to answer it for anyone but yourself.
Money you can reach the same day, in an ordinary savings account, covering rent, food, transport and bills. This comes first. Investing before it exists means a broken car forces you to sell at whatever the price happens to be that week.
Credit cards, overdrafts, payday or car-title loans. Clearing a debt at 22% is a certain 22% return, which beats anything on this page and carries none of the risk. Pay that down first.
Not for a deposit, a wedding, a course, a car or a planned move. This asset has spent multi-year stretches below its previous high. A fixed date and a volatile asset are a bad combination.
Not that it would sting — that it would change nothing about your housing, your bills or your family. If the honest answer is no, invest a smaller amount, or do not invest.
Bitcoin fell about 73% in 2018 and roughly 77% through 2022, and about 85% peak-to-trough after 2013. Each recovery took years, and past recoveries are not a reason to expect the next one. If a fall like that would make you sell, it will cost you real money.
This summary updates as you work through the list. Nothing is being scored, and there is no version of this where reaching a different answer would help you — the only useful answer is the true one.
Your answers stay in this browser tab. They are not submitted, stored, or seen by anyone at Grey Crest, and this self-check is not a suitability assessment, a recommendation, or advice.
Plainly, with nothing softened underneath. Any one of these on its own is enough to make Ascent the wrong product today. None of them says anything permanent about you — circumstances change, and the door does not close.
You do not have an emergency fund.
Three to six months of expenses, in cash, reachable the same day. That comes first, every time. Without it the first unexpected bill forces a sale at whatever the price happens to be that week, which is how a temporary loss becomes a permanent one.
You are carrying high-interest debt.
A card balance at 22% costs you 22% a year, with certainty. Clearing it is a certain 22% return, and it is the only certainty on offer anywhere near this page. The debt wins.
You will need the money within about five years.
A deposit, a wedding, tuition, a car, a course. Bitcoin has spent multi-year stretches far below a previous high. Five years is the floor for this, not the target — and a floor is not a promise about what happens after it.
Losing the full amount would change your life.
Not “would annoy you”. If this balance went to zero and that meant missed rent, a debt you could not service, or a plan you had to abandon, the amount is too large. Size it at what you could genuinely write off.
You are looking for a quick return.
There is no fast version of this. The entire argument for Ascent is a long horizon doing the work a large balance does for other people. If the plan is to double it inside a year, we would rather you did not.
Ascent carries a high risk of loss, including the loss of everything you put in. A small opening amount does not make it a low-risk product — it makes the amount at risk small. Nothing on this page is a recommendation, and no return is promised or implied.
The rest of this page is careful about what can go wrong, because it should be. This is the other half of it: the reasons a long-horizon holder wants the asset in the first place. Every one of them is a property you can check, not a view about the price.
The issuance schedule, published in advance and enforced by every participant in the network. The curve is arithmetic, not a projection.
Supply halves every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years — so issued supply is exactly 21,000,000 × (1 − 2⁻ⁿ) after n halvings. Real halving dates drift by months because block times vary; this plots the schedule, not a calendar. It says nothing about price.
21,000,000
Hard cap, fixed since 2009
There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoin. That limit is not a policy, a target, or an undertaking someone has given — it is a rule every participant in the network independently enforces, and it has not moved since the first block in 2009. Anyone can verify the number themselves rather than take it on trust.
~95%
Of all bitcoin that will ever exist
New supply halves roughly every four years, so issuance is far along its curve. The remaining coins are released over the next century on a schedule published in advance. Whatever else is uncertain, how much of this asset will exist is not.
~21%
Purchasing power an idle balance lost, 2019–2025
The reason cash quietly lost around a fifth of its purchasing power between 2019 and 2025 is that the supply of it is a decision, taken by people, in response to circumstances. Bitcoin's supply is not a decision anyone gets to take. That is the single property the rest of this page is built on.
Same asset
At every size on the ladder
Not a smaller share of a fund, not a different product with worse terms, not a waiting list. The same asset, the same market, the same settlement, at any size. Very little else in finance works this way, and it is the reason a tier like this one can exist at all.
Bounded
Downside is limited to what you commit
The most a position can cost you is the amount you put into it — which is precisely why the size of that amount is the decision that matters, and why the check earlier on this page comes first. The upside carries no matching ceiling. That asymmetry is the whole argument for holding a small amount of something volatile for a long time.
None of this makes the asset safe, and none of it is a reason to invest more than the amount you settled on earlier. A capped supply tells you what cannot be diluted; it tells you nothing about what anyone will pay for it in any given year, and the record above shows how violently that number moves. Both halves are true at once, which is exactly why the size of the position is the decision that matters.
Held for a single year, this asset’s outcomes in the sample below ran from -73% to +1,331%. Held across every 8-year stretch in the same short history, the range was far tighter. That narrowing is the whole of the argument for a long horizon — and it is a description of 12 years of the past, not a rule about the future.
Every overlapping holding period of each length in the sample, shown as its best, median and worst annualised outcome. The shaded band is the full spread; it narrows to the right partly because outcomes clustered and partly because longer windows are fewer and share more of the same years. The axis stops at +300% — a best case above that leaves the top of the frame and is labelled with its full value, so the loss half of the chart keeps its real height.
Sample: 12 calendar-year returns for a single asset, 2014–2025 (of which 2025 is an illustrative row on stated assumptions rather than settled data). Windows overlap and therefore re-use the same years many times over: there are 12 windows of the shortest length and only 5 of the longest. Returns are annualised and exclude fees, taxes and execution costs.
Worst single year in the sample
-73%
calendar year 2018
Anyone who put money in at the start of that year and needed it back at the end of it took that loss in full. A long horizon does not protect you from the year you are forced to sell in.
Worst multi-year window
-47.4%
over 2 years, -27.4% annualised
Waiting did not rescue that window. It meant living with the loss for 2 years and still ending below where it started. A longer horizon changed the spread in this sample; it never removed the possibility of loss at any length.
Longest windows in the sample
5
overlapping 8-year windows, not 5 independent ones
The right-hand end of the band is drawn from a handful of stretches that share most of their years with each other. A narrow band there is partly a fact about the outcomes and partly a fact about how little data there is.
Read this before you read anything into the chart above
This is a small sample: 12 calendar years of one asset’s short history, one year of which is illustrative rather than settled data. The windows overlap heavily, so they are not independent observations, and a range narrows automatically when there are fewer of them. Evidence this thin cannot establish that holding longer reduces risk in general, and it says nothing at all about what the next 8 years will do.
Note especially what the chart makes tempting: in this sample no window of 3 years or more ended down. That is a fact about 12 years in which this asset rose enormously, not a property of holding for 3 years. A sample in which nothing ever lost money is a sign that the sample is too short and too favourable to lean on — it is not a floor under your money.
This is a higher risk asset. It has fallen -73% in a single calendar year, it can stay down for years, and it can lose the entire amount you put in — over any horizon, including a long one. Nothing here is a promise, a projection or a guarantee of any return.
These rolling-window figures are arithmetic on 12 annual returns for a single asset, before fees, taxes, spreads and execution costs, and they assume the position is simply held throughout. Past performance is not indicative of future results, historical dispersion is not a forecast of future dispersion, and none of this is investment advice or a recommendation that this asset is suitable for you. Only commit money you can afford to lose in full.
Set what you would open with, what you could add each month without missing it, and how long you would leave it alone. Everything below is scenario arithmetic on the assumptions shown — not a forecast, not a promise, and not advice. Ascent is higher risk than the rest of this firm’s ladder, and the downside is modelled here at the same size as the upside.
Nothing here is sent anywhere — the model runs in your browser. Use an amount you could genuinely afford to lose in full.
$500 – $25,000
$0 – $1,000 a month · $0 is allowed
1 – 30 years
How much risk you are taking
About a third of the sleeve is in bitcoin and the rest sits in short-dated cash-like assets. It still falls in a bad year, but by roughly a third as much as bitcoin itself. This is the starting point for most people who have never held a volatile asset before.
Suited to
Someone who wants exposure but would stop contributing if they watched half of it disappear.
Not suited to
Anyone who needs the money back on a date they already know, or who is investing borrowed money.
Measured risk class, from today to year 20. Where a scenario line sits below the dashed line, that scenario has lost you money.
The band spans the bear and bull assumptions. It is not a confidence interval, it is not a range of likely outcomes, and results outside it are possible in both directions — including losing everything put in. Each path applies one fixed annual rate throughout, which no real market has ever done. The assumed bear and bull rates move as you change the horizon: a longer holding period narrows the spread of an annualised return, which makes the average outcome less erratic. It does not make the money safe, and the spread of possible end balances gets wider, not narrower.
Money you put in
$24,500
$500 to open, then $100 a month for 20 years.
Base case at year 20
$66,927
On an assumed +9% a year. Bear $13,088 · bull $119,630.
Base case in today's money
$39,282
What it would buy after an assumed 2.7% inflation a year.
Base case gain on what you put in
+$42,427
Before any fees or tax, neither of which is modelled here.
At the assumed bear rate of -7% a year, year 20 ends at $13,088 against the $24,500 you would have put in. That is $11,412 less than you contributed — 47% of your money gone, after 20 years of paying in. That is a normal outcome for a higher-risk holding, not an edge case, and it is the outcome you have to be able to live with before you start.
The worst calendar year in the record cost bitcoin -73%. The Measured class holds 35% of the sleeve in bitcoin, so the same year modelled at that weight — assuming the rest simply held its value — would have cost about -26%. Apply a fall of -28% — the stress depth this page uses, scaled to that share, and a stress case rather than the deepest decline on record — to the base-case position at year 20, and it goes from $66,927 to $48,187. That fall removes $18,739 — 0.8x the $24,500 you would have paid in, because it takes the gains with it. A future fall can be deeper than any on record, and there is no assurance that a fall of any depth recovers.
Bitcoin's worst year on record
-73%
Measured at that weight, modelled
-26%
Stress fall, Measured
-28%
Position after that fall
$48,187
Value removed
-$18,739
A fall of this size has taken years to recover before, and paying in monthly through one means buying the whole way down with no guarantee of a way back up. Over a 20-year horizon you should expect to sit through more than one. If that number is one you could not hold through — or if losing it in full would change your life — this product is not suitable for you, and nothing on this page is a recommendation that you buy it.
Scenario arithmetic on the assumptions shown — not a forecast, not a recommendation, and not investment advice. Contributions are modelled as paid monthly and compounded monthly at each scenario’s equivalent rate; no fees, taxes, trading costs, or missed contributions are included, and every one of those would reduce the figures above. Real returns do not arrive as a steady annual rate — they come in violent, unevenly spaced moves, and a path that ends well can spend years below what was paid in. Past performance is not indicative of future results. You can lose some or all of the money you put in.
Three ways in, at three very different sizes. Where you start is a fact about your balance today, not a verdict on you.
Individuals starting out
From
$500
The amount it opens at, not a balance you have to keep.
For people investing small, regular amounts over a long horizon. Higher risk than the tiers beside it, and there is a suitability check before you can open one.
Established private clients
From
$10,000
The amount it opens at, not a balance you have to keep.
Standard through Institutional. Managed allocations with an assigned advisor, structured reporting, and a defined review cycle.
Companies and institutions
From
$250,000
The amount it opens at, not a balance you have to keep.
A ring-fenced balance-sheet allocation with segregated custody, board-ready reporting, and a written investment policy statement.
What separates these rungs is the size of the account and the structure around it — not how seriously the client is taken. A larger balance buys more structure: written policy, scheduled reviews, reporting a board can sign off. It does not buy better answers to the same questions, and it does not remove risk. You can move up a step whenever it makes sense to, and there is no penalty for staying exactly where you are.
Minimums are opening amounts, not standing balances. Every step carries the risk of loss, including the loss of the full amount; the smaller figure at the first step does not make it safer. Which step suits you depends on your own circumstances — nothing here is a recommendation to take any of them.
Including the uncomfortable ones. If an answer here puts you off, that is the answer doing its job.
Ascent opens at $500, and the suggested recurring contribution is $100 a month. The monthly part is a suggestion, not a commitment — you can set it lower, set it to nothing, or change it whenever you like. Do not stretch to reach the opening figure. If $500 is money you would feel the absence of, the right amount for you right now is zero, and that is a perfectly good answer.
It is a fair question and it deserves a straight answer rather than a slogan. No, in the sense that you own a real asset with a real market rather than betting against a house with a built-in edge, and the odds are not set against you by design. But it has more in common with gambling than a savings account does: the price is driven largely by what the next buyer will pay, the swings are violent, and the range of outcomes genuinely includes losing most of your money. If the appeal is the thrill of watching the number move, that is gambling whatever you are holding, and you will probably lose money doing it. If the reason is a small, boring, automatic contribution you intend to ignore for twenty years and can afford to lose in full, that is investing. The difference sits in your circumstances and your behaviour, not in the asset.
General information, not investment advice and not a recommendation to invest. This is a higher-risk product that can lose value, including all of it. Any figures are scenarios on stated assumptions, not forecasts; past performance is not indicative of future results. Consider your own circumstances and, if you are unsure, speak to an adviser who is not paid by us.
Ascent opens at $500, with $100 a month suggested after that. Both numbers are a starting point, not a target — you set the amount, you can pause the monthly contribution at any time, and you can withdraw.
There is no sign-up button on this page until the 5 statements at the top are all true of you. That is not a formality — an emergency fund, no expensive debt, no need for the money for about five years, being able to lose it in full, and knowing this asset has fallen more than 70% before.
Back to the self-checkA short call with an advisor who will go through your situation with you — including the case for not doing this yet, if that is where it lands. Free, and there is nothing to prepare.
Talk to someone firstNot ready for either? The courses are free and open to anyone — how bitcoin works, what volatility does to a portfolio, and how to think about risk before you commit a dollar.
Browse the free coursesStarting a conversation commits you to nothing, and no amount is too small to ask about. Ascent carries higher risk than the rest of what we do: the value can fall a long way and stay there, and you should only put in money you could afford to lose in full. Nothing on this page is a forecast or investment advice.