What Happens to Your Crypto When You Die?

Cryptocurrency was designed so that only the holder of the private keys can move the funds. That's a strength while you're alive — and a catastrophe if you die without leaving any way to recover them. There is no bank to call and no password-reset button. If your keys are lost, the coins are gone forever.

Why so much crypto is lost

Analysts estimate that around a fifth of all Bitcoin in existence is permanently lost. A large share of that is inheritance-related: an owner passes away and their family either doesn't know the crypto exists, or knows but can't access the wallet. We've seen single wallets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars vanish this way.

The two failure modes

1. Nobody knows it exists. No statements, no paperwork — the asset is invisible. Step one is simply recording that the wallet or exchange account exists.
2. They know, but can't get in. They know about the Coinbase account or the hardware wallet but have no way to recover the keys or pass the exchange's verification.

How to leave crypto safely

• Inventory every holding — each exchange account, hot wallet and hardware wallet, and roughly what it holds.
• Never put a seed phrase in your will. Wills can become public during probate; that would hand your funds to anyone who reads it.
• **Record the *recovery path*, not the keys.** For an exchange, that's the account and how the executor proves entitlement. For self-custody, it's where the device and backup are stored and the steps to recover — kept separate from the vault itself.
• Tell your executor the asset class exists so they know to look for it.

Where a vault fits

A digital inheritance vault solves the first failure mode completely and most of the second: it records that the crypto exists and the exact steps to recover it, releases that to the people you choose, and — crucially — never stores the keys or seed phrase itself, so the record can't be used to steal from you while you're alive.

Crypto should also be named in your will so the legal right to it is clear. You can write a free will that references your digital assets in a few minutes. For the wider picture, see our digital estate planning checklist.