How does Crypto Asset Consultants help with crypto inheritance?

We help holders build a full plan: inventory, access instructions, secure storage and will alignment. We also support families and executors after a death, including liaising with exchanges, valuing holdings for probate and attempting recovery of inherited wallets.

Estate Planning

Crypto Inheritance Planning

Q: Is crypto subject to inheritance tax in the UK?

Yes. Cryptoassets held by a UK-domiciled person form part of their estate and are counted at market value at the date of death. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 confirmed that cryptoassets can be property under English law, which supports how they are treated in estates.

Make sure your crypto outlives you

Crypto inheritance planning done properly

Crypto is unforgiving. Forget a password and, with self-custody, there is no reset link. Now imagine your family trying to work out what you owned, where it was and how to reach it, while grieving, with no instructions at all.

Without a plan, crypto is one of the easiest assets in the world to lose forever. With a plan, it passes on like anything else you own. Crypto Asset Consultants helps UK holders, families and executors get this right, before and after a death.

Why crypto breaks traditional estate planning

A house has a title register. A bank account has a branch your executor can write to. Crypto has neither. It exists on a blockchain, controlled by whoever holds the private keys, and it does not announce itself to anyone.

Self-custody has no safety net. If your keys or seed phrase die with you, the assets are gone. Nobody, not the courts, not the developers, can move them.
Exchanges do not know you have died. Accounts simply sit dormant unless someone tells the platform and follows its bereavement process.
Solicitors often miss it. Many wills never mention cryptoassets, and many estate practitioners still do not ask.
Secrecy works against your heirs. The habits that keep crypto safe in life, telling no one, hiding backups, are exactly what makes it vanish at death.

The two failure modes

Almost every lost inheritance comes down to one of two problems. Either the family never finds out the crypto exists, or they know it exists but cannot access it. A good plan solves both: discovery and access. It does so without compromising your security while you are alive.

Practical steps to protect your crypto for your heirs

Create an inventory. List every exchange account, wallet, staking position and significant token. You do not need to record values, which change daily, just what exists and where.
Write access instructions. Explain, step by step, how your executor reaches each asset: where hardware wallets are kept, how seed phrase backups are stored, which email addresses and phone numbers the accounts use. Write for a non-technical reader.
Never put keys in your will. A will becomes public once probate is granted. It should say that you hold cryptoassets and who inherits them, then point to your separate access document without revealing its contents.
Store instructions securely. Options include a solicitor holding a sealed letter, a safe deposit box, a home safe known to your executor, or splitting information so no single location holds everything. The test: your executor can reach it after your death, a burglar cannot reach it today.
Tell someone the plan exists. Your executor does not need your keys now. They need to know there is crypto, and where the instructions will be.
Review yearly. Wallets change, exchanges close, holdings move. An out-of-date plan can be little better than none.

Inheritance tax on crypto in a UK estate

Cryptoassets are firmly inside the UK inheritance tax net. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 confirmed that cryptoassets are capable of being property under English law, and HMRC expects them to be valued at the date of death and included in the estate alongside everything else. If the estate exceeds the available nil-rate bands, inheritance tax is normally charged at 40 per cent on the excess.

Two practical points catch families out. First, tax can be due even if nobody can access the crypto yet, so valuation and access need to move together. Second, executors must report holdings accurately; our crypto tax accountant service helps with valuations, reporting and any historic tax issues the estate uncovers.

The executor's challenge

Being an executor is hard enough without blockchain forensics. Executors of crypto estates typically face: identifying holdings from bank statements and email trails, dealing with exchange bereavement teams in other jurisdictions, securing assets quickly so they are not stolen or mishandled, valuing volatile assets for probate, and physically locating devices and backups. Mistakes can be costly, and executors can be personally liable for getting the estate wrong.

How we help families and executors

We work on both sides of the problem. For holders, we design the full plan: inventory, access instructions, secure storage arrangements and coordination with your solicitor so your will and your crypto plan agree with each other. This work sits naturally alongside our wider crypto wealth management service.

For bereaved families and executors, we help identify and secure holdings, liaise with exchanges, support probate valuations and, where keys are missing or incomplete, attempt crypto wallet recovery on inherited wallets. Recovery is never guaranteed, but partial information often survives, and a professional, methodical attempt is far safer than trial and error that could lock the wallet permanently.

If you want the fuller picture of how estates handle digital assets, read our guide to what happens to crypto when you die.

Important: Crypto Asset Consultants provides consultancy, education and guidance. We do not provide FCA-regulated financial advice. Cryptoassets are largely unregulated in the UK; their value can fall as well as rise and you could lose all your money. Consider seeking independent regulated advice for your wider financial planning.