Crypt-o-currency?

If you have cryptocurrency, congratulations: you’ve created a unique estate planning challenge that didn’t exist twenty years ago.

Unlike traditional bank accounts, there’s no customer service number your family can call to recover access to your crypto wallet. If you lose the keys, the money is just gone. Forever stuck in a digital crypt. No appeals process, no recovery options, no “I forgot my password” link.

This has led to some spectacular losses. There’s an estimated $140 billion in cryptocurrency that’s permanently inaccessible because people died or lost access to their wallets.

But crypto is just the most extreme example of the digital asset problem. You might have money in PayPay, Line Pay, or other digital payment systems. You might have points or rewards in various loyalty programs. You might have digital gift cards or credits in online stores.

None of these things exist in physical form. They’re merely entries in databases, protected by passwords and two-factor authentication and security questions that make sense to you but might not make sense to anyone else.

The solution is documentation. Where are your wallets? What are the seed phrases? How do you access each account? What’s the two-factor authentication method?

And please, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t store this information in the same place as your cryptocurrency. If your computer crashes and takes both your wallet and your backup information, you’ve solved your own problem in the most expensive way possible.