Inheritance of cryptocurrency assets poses challenges for families due to lack of planning

From Yahoo Finance: 2025-06-22 08:31:00

As cryptocurrency investments rise, a new challenge emerges: what happens to digital assets after the owner passes away? Many fail to plan for the inheritance of Bitcoin or crypto holdings, leaving families uninformed or locked out, per Barron’s. Crypto’s unique bearer asset nature requires informed heirs to access private keys for account recovery, posing challenges for estate planning. Executors can access indirectly held crypto assets through traditional means, but direct holdings on exchanges or wallets present hurdles, as many platforms do not allow beneficiaries to be named. Experts recommend investors document and securely store key information for heirs, including private keys, seed phrases, and passwords, to facilitate recovery. It’s crucial to appoint an executor proficient with cryptocurrency to prevent heirs from being permanently locked out of assets without access credentials.



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