Asia’s young, self-made billionaires are a decade younger than their American and European peers. Having made their fortunes in tech and crypto—and with larger risk appetites than the “old money” rich—Asia’s nouveau riche manage their wealth very differently.
“What if somebody comes with $100 million of stablecoin? You can’t take them to a local bank,” Chi-Man Kwan, founder and CEO of Singapore and Hong Kong-headquartered Raffles Family Office (RFO), tells Fortune.
Younger billionaires are also more likely to store their wealth on the blockchain, via “newer currencies” like Bitcoin and Ethereum. “Even if their assets are U.S.-denominated, it’s going to be in stablecoins,” he says. Yet Kwan adds that most traditional-finance institutions don’t accommodate these digital currencies.
In 2022, RFO started Revo, Asia’s first digital assets-focused multi-family office. In February, Revo secured licenses from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission that allow it to offer professional portfolio management services for digital assets alongside traditional investments.
A 2026 survey by fund administration provider Ocorian found that family offices are increasingly seeking out digital assets. Eighty-six percent of family-office principals and senior executives are including crypto in their investment strategies. Yet, Wealth Briefing Asia notes that regulatory and reporting challenges often stop family offices from fully embracing crypto assets.
“Ten years from now, people may transact mostly in stablecoins,” Kwan says. “Are wealth managers or family offices like us ready?”
‘Upside down’
Greater China is minting billionaires at an unprecedented pace. According to the 2026 Hurun Global Rich List, 1,110 of the world’s 4,020 billionaires now hail from China, making it the country with the largest billionaire population. (The U.S. comes a close second, with 1,000 billionaires.)
Kwan, who served Chinese clients at banks like Standard Chartered and BNP Paribas, saw China’s growing wealth take shape by the early 2010s. “There were many Chinese entrepreneurs who were turning private companies public, and becoming billionaires almost overnight,” Kwan recalls. “They turned Hong Kong’s wealth management sector upside down.”
Over the years, Kwan and his team also learned to work with a new breed of younger billionaires. “It’s easy to speak to someone in their 50s or 60s about legacy planning, because they’re generally married, with children of a certain age,” he explains. “But if you talk to a billionaire who is 35, they may not even be married yet, so how you cater to them is very different.”
Next stop, Africa
RFO now serves high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) across six Asian cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Bangkok.
Kwan’s push to expand the family office’s geographical footprint correlates with global wealth flows, as HNWIs worldwide look to diversify their assets across different geographies. According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, global offshore financial wealth jumped 8.4% to $15.7 trillion in 2025.
But RFO’s expansion has taken it somewhere unexpected: Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.
In March, RFO co-hosted the inaugural Rwanda Family Office Symposium alongside national economic entities like the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and the Kigali International Financial Center. Then last month, Kwan appointed former Rwandan Minister of State for Infrastructure Jean de Dieu Uwihanganye as RFO’s principal of emerging markets and business development to drive investment flows between Asia and Africa.
On Oct. 22, RFO signed a strategic capital mobilization agreement with the RDB, in an attempt to “expand private sector participation in Rwanda”.
Kwan points out that by 2050, potentially a quarter of people will be African. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they someday overtake Asia as the fastest-growing continent in the world,” he says. “They’ll be the ones with the highest earning—and spending—power.”
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