Who gets your crypto when you’re gone?

In 2013, Welsh systems engineer James Howells accidentally threw out a hard drive containing the private key to 8,000 Bitcoin. Over a decade later, he's still trying to recover it from a landfill—and with it, a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

James's story has become crypto's most famous cautionary tale. Make sure you maintain access to your private key. Lose it and your assets go with it—forever.

Now, as cryptocurrency and other forms of digital currency become a more established part of many investors' financial lives, that same reality is taking on a new form. Estate planners, investors, and families are beginning to think about what happens to those assets when an owner dies. The challenge is no longer just maintaining access to digital assets during your lifetime. Investors must begin to ask: Who will get my crypto when I'm gone? And will they know how to access it?

"People have different ways of securing their cryptocurrency wallets: two-factor authentication, hardware devices, seed phrases, special codes," says Austin Jarvis, director of estate, trust, and high-net-worth taxation at the Schwab Center for Financial Research. "It's secure, and you don't have to worry about the assets being stolen. But are your beneficiaries going to know about that at all?"

For generations, wealth transfer has relied on financial institutions. Even when families don't know exactly what assets exist, there are often ways to uncover them. Banks keep records. Brokerage firms issue account statements. Courts identify and distribute assets. Meanwhile, unclaimed property databases can help reconnect heirs with forgotten funds.

Cryptocurrency doesn't always fit into those systems.

Many custodial platforms are now establishing procedures that allow executors or trustees to request the transfer of assets after an account holder's death, reflecting an evolution in the industry. But outcomes often depend on a combination of estate documents and platform policies—and in some cases, whether heirs are even aware the account exists.

For crypto assets held in a private digital wallet, even proof of ownership isn't enough. Without the private key, there's no way in.

As a result, ensuring future access has become an increasingly important part of managing digital wealth.

"Failing to plan can result in the complete loss of assets," Austin warns.

Some estimates suggest that between 11% and 18% of all Bitcoin may be permanently inaccessible. While some of those losses stem from forgotten passcodes or misplaced recovery phrases, others occur because owners die without leaving behind clear instructions for their heirs. Those lessons are helping shape a growing focus on digital estate planning as investors and professionals look for ways to preserve access across generations.

As digital assets become a more common part of family wealth, estate planning professionals are adapting alongside them. What was once considered a niche issue for early adopters is increasingly becoming part of mainstream financial planning conversations.

"Many estate planning attorneys are now specifically asking clients what accounts exist that are paperless and whether they have any digital assets," Austin says.

But identifying digital assets in a will is only part of the equation. There's a catch: Wills become public record during probate. Put a private key or recovery phrase in one, and you've essentially published it. Estate planners are increasingly treating crypto access details as a separate document entirely—secure, private, and out of the public record.

"You don't want everything that you own with value to be easily accessible," Austin says. "But you need to have a plan for how your executor and beneficiaries are able to access it later."

A letter of instruction—informal, private, and legally separate from a will—is becoming a go-to solution.

"It can literally be a treasure map," Austin says. "You can put it in a secure location like a safe deposit box or you can leave it with an attorney."

Today, that kind of digital estate plan often serves as the bridge between a crypto investor and their heirs. Over time, however, estate planning experts expect cryptocurrency platforms to play a larger role in making digital assets easier to transfer after death.

As cryptocurrency has become more mainstream, the industry has begun building some of the same safeguards that investors have long relied on in traditional finance. But the process is still far from standardized, and requirements vary by platform.

For Austin, one of the most meaningful next steps would be broader adoption of beneficiary designations—commonplace with traditional assets. Such tools could help reduce uncertainty for heirs and simplify the transfer process after death. With digital assets becoming more common, he believes the industry will continue moving in that direction—even if the lost-wallet era isn't entirely behind us.

As he notes, every generation has its own version of hidden wealth. "There's always going to be people that you didn't know had gold bars in a safe or cash under the mattress or, now, cryptocurrency stored on a forgotten device," Austin says.

But the ecosystem is evolving. Cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming part of family wealth, retirement portfolios, and long-term legacy plans. In many ways, the growing focus on inheritance and estate planning reflects how far digital assets have come.

And as that transition continues, the industry's next challenge may be ensuring digital assets fit as seamlessly into estate planning as they do into modern portfolios. If that happens, the next chapter in crypto's evolution may be defined not only by ownership, but by the ability to confidently pass digital wealth to future generations.