Firms that manage the wealth and personal affairs of rich people are increasingly looking to make bets on crypto.

That’s according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which found that nearly half the family offices it does business with want to add digital currencies to their stable of investments.

The bank reported that 15% of respondents in a recent survey—which included responses from more than 150 family offices worldwide—are already invested in cryptocurrencies. Another 45% would be interested in diving into the space as a hedge for “higher inflation, prolonged low rates, and other macroeconomic developments following a year of unprecedented global monetary and fiscal stimulus.”

The interest from family offices shows how these sometimes secretive companies that manage the affairs of the rich are turning into a force across multiple markets. Of the firms that participated in the survey, 22% had assets under management of $5 billion or more, and 45% oversaw $1 billion to $4.9 billion.

Some family offices have long been investors in private equity and real estate, but have recently been one of the biggest drivers of the boom in special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Just like that phenomenon, the past year’s crypto-market frenzy has lured mainstream financial institutions, athletes and celebrities. As family offices grow in size and influence, critics are also pushing for more regulation, especially after the implosion of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management hit banks with billions of dollars in losses.

Respondents in the survey also indicated interest investing in the “digital asset ecosystem.” The majority of families want to talk to us “about blockchain and digital ledger technology,” said Meena Flynn, who helps lead private wealth management for Goldman. There are many who think that “this technology is going to be as impactful as the internet has been from an efficiency and productivity perspective.”

Other survey respondents, however, indicated they still had underlying concerns about the long-term value of digital currencies, despite the financial industry’s more recent embrace of crypto and emerging blockchain technologies. Bitcoin—the largest cryptocurrency—is now more than 50% below its record high levels near $65,000 in mid-April. Prices, which on Tuesday slid below $30,000 for the first time in a month, are still up more than 230% from a year earlier.

Family offices have proliferated this century, partly due to the boom in tech billionaires. More than 10,000 family offices globally manage the wealth of a single family, with at least half having started this century, according to EY. A 2019 estimate by researcher Campden Wealth valued family office assets at almost $6 trillion globally, larger than the entire hedge fund industry.

The firms vary markedly in size. Some manage hundreds of millions of dollars, while others oversee the fortunes of multi-billionaires such as Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos. Many choose obscure names to operate out of the public eye. Alphabet Inc. founder Brin’s family office, Bayshore Global Management, gets its name from the location of the company’s headquarters. Charles and David Koch named theirs after the year their grandfather emigrated to America: 1888.

They’ve also surged in number across Asia following booming fortunes of the region’s ultra-wealthy, with China’s Jack Ma and real estate billionaire Wu Yajun both establishing their own family offices in the past decade. Meantime, members of the ultra-wealthy based outside Asia including Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio are increasingly setting up branches of their family offices in the area.

—With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan, Benjamin Stupples and Sonali Basak.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.