How Does an Executor Access Cryptocurrency?

An executor accesses cryptocurrency in one of two ways. Coins held on an exchange pass through the company's deceased-customer process, which reviews a death certificate and letters testamentary. Self-custodied coins move only with the wallet's private keys, so the executor must find the seed phrase, hardware wallet, or password manager the owner left behind.

Both paths run through the same three questions: where do the coins live, what legal authority does the executor hold, and what were the holdings worth on the date of death. Here is how to work through each one, and what to do when the trail goes cold.

Why Crypto Behaves Differently From a Bank Account

A bank account survives its owner in a way cryptocurrency may not. The bank holds the money. When the account holder dies, the executor presents a death certificate and court-issued letters, and the bank releases the funds through a process it runs every day. There is a company to write to, a legal department that answers, and a regulator behind both.

Self-custodied cryptocurrency strips away every one of those safety nets. The coins exist as entries on a public ledger, and the only thing that moves them is a signature produced by the wallet's private keys. No company holds the asset, so there is no one to serve court papers on. Whoever holds the keys controls the coins.

Honesty matters here, so we will say it plainly: if the person who died kept coins in a self-custody wallet and no one can find the seed phrase or the keys, the cryptocurrency may be permanently unrecoverable. No password reset exists, and no customer service line can help. A court can declare the estate the rightful owner, and that declaration moves nothing on the blockchain. An executor should understand this before telling beneficiaries what to expect.

Step One: Work Out Where the Coins Live

Cryptocurrency sits in one of two custody worlds, and each has its own playbook. Sorting out which one you are in belongs near the top of your executor checklist, right alongside finding bank and brokerage accounts.

Signs of an exchange account. Look for tax forms from a crypto exchange in the mail, exchange emails in the decedent's inbox (statements, price alerts, security codes), bank statements showing transfers to or from an exchange, and exchange apps on the decedent's phone.

Signs of self-custody. Look for small hardware devices, often USB-shaped, sometimes with a tiny screen. Look for cards, sheets, or metal plates carrying a list of 12 or 24 unrelated English words. Look for wallet apps on the phone that show a balance without any company name attached, and for files or notes with names like "wallet backup."

Many holders used both worlds at once, so finding an exchange account does not end the search.

Exchange Accounts: The Closest Thing to a Bank Process

If the coins sit with a large U.S. exchange (Coinbase is the one families encounter most often), the path looks familiar. Major custodial exchanges publish deceased-customer or estate-services instructions, and the request generally rests on the same documents a bank would ask for: a certified death certificate, letters testamentary or letters of administration, government identification for the executor, and instructions for where the assets should go. Some companies transfer the holdings in kind to an estate-controlled account; others convert them to dollars and send the proceeds.

Each exchange sets its own document list, and those lists change, so pull the current instructions from the company's own help pages before mailing anything. Expect the review to take longer than a bank payout, and expect follow-up requests if the estate paperwork does not match the account name exactly.

One warning before you reach for the easy route: resist the shortcut of logging in with the decedent's saved password. The section on RUFADAA below explains why that shortcut carries legal risk even when you know the credentials.

Self-Custody Wallets: The Search for the Keys

Here the job looks less like paperwork and more like detective work. A self-custody wallet has no company behind it, so the entire task is locating whatever the decedent used to control the coins. Seed phrases and hardware wallets turn up in these places:

• A safe, lockbox, or safe deposit box
• Desk drawers, filing cabinets, and the folder of estate papers
• A card or sheet listing 12 or 24 unrelated words in order (that is a seed phrase; treat it like a signed blank check)
• Metal plates or capsules stamped with words or letters
• Hardware wallets and any PIN notes stored near them
• Password managers, encrypted files, and cloud notes
• Pages tucked into books, taped under drawers, or stored with the will

Treat the search as part of building the estate inventory, and keep a chain of custody as you go: note where and when each item was found, photograph it in place when you can, have a second person present, and then store the material offline in a sealed envelope. Never type a seed phrase into a website, email it, save a photo of it to a cloud account, or read it aloud on a phone call. Anyone who learns those words can take the coins from anywhere on earth, and no chargeback follows.

The rule the whole section hangs on: never move the coins before authority and valuation are settled. Transferring assets before the court issues letters can create personal liability for the person who did it, wrecks the clean date-of-death valuation record the estate needs, and can look like self-dealing even when the intent was protective. Find the keys, protect the keys, record the holding, and wait.

RUFADAA: The Law That Gives Executors a Path

Nearly every state has adopted a version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, RUFADAA, published by the Uniform Law Commission in 2015. As adopted state by state, the act gives a court-appointed fiduciary a legal route to digital assets and account records held by custodians such as exchanges and email providers.

The act works in tiers. A designation the account holder made inside the platform itself (an online tool naming who takes over) outranks everything else. Estate planning documents come next: a will or trust that grants digital-asset authority. The platform's terms of service fill any gap left by the first two.

RUFADAA also draws a line between records and content. A fiduciary can generally obtain records of the asset itself: balances, transaction histories, and the catalog of accounts the decedent held. Reading the decedent's actual messages is a separate matter that requires the decedent's explicit consent, given through an online tool or estate documents. The details vary by state, so treat this as the national pattern rather than the rule in any one statehouse.

This framework is also why "just log in" is the wrong move. Laws against unauthorized computer access were written without probate in mind, and terms of service tie an account to the person who opened it. RUFADAA exists so an executor can make a lawful, documented request instead of an impersonation. Use the formal path; it protects you as much as the estate.

If you are on the other side of this problem, planning your own estate rather than settling one, our digital asset estate planning guide covers the tools that make a future executor's job far easier.

Crypto Is Property: Valuation, Volatility, and Duty

The IRS settled the classification question in 2014: virtual currency is treated as property for federal tax purposes, and the general tax principles that apply to property transactions apply to it (IRS Notice 2014-21). The agency's current digital-assets guidance states the same rule: for U.S. tax purposes, digital assets are considered property, not currency. Three consequences follow for an executor.

It goes on the inventory. Cryptocurrency the decedent owned is estate property in the same way a brokerage account or a coin collection is. List it at its U.S. dollar value.

The valuation date matters. Crypto trades around the clock and moves fast, so pin the number down: record the value on the date of death, note which exchange price you used, and keep the export or printout. That figure feeds the probate accounting the beneficiaries and the court will eventually review, and it anchors the basis heirs will use later.

Volatility raises a question the executor should not answer alone. An estate that holds coins through a long administration rides every market swing, and hold-or-sell is a judgment call with real consequences in either direction. An executor who trades estate crypto on instinct invites a challenge from whichever side the market punished. Put the question to the beneficiaries in writing, bring it to the estate's attorney, and remember that some states require court approval before estate assets are sold. Speculating with estate funds sits firmly on the list of things covered in what an executor cannot do. Prudence here means process: document who was consulted, what was decided, and why.

Guard the Estate From Thieves and Recovery Scams

Crypto theft is as irreversible as crypto loss. That fact shapes a few hard rules.

Never share a seed phrase with anyone who offers to "recover," "validate," or "migrate" the coins. Companies that contact grieving families out of nowhere with recovery offers are running a well-worn scam, and the pitch always ends with a request for the words or an up-front fee. Never enter the phrase into a website, an app, or a form, no matter how official it looks. Be alert after a published obituary, which tells scammers exactly which families to phish.

Real help exists: forensic firms repair damaged hardware wallets, and attorneys and accountants handle the legal and tax sides every day. None of that legitimate help begins with a stranger asking you to read out the seed phrase.

When to Bring In a Probate Attorney

Plenty of executors clear a small exchange account with the custodian's own process and never need counsel. Bring in a probate attorney when the holdings are large relative to the estate, when the will grants no digital-asset authority and a custodian refuses the request, when self-custody coins surface and the keys are missing, when beneficiaries disagree about holding versus selling, or when the tax questions start stacking up (a tax professional belongs in that conversation too). An attorney can also petition the court for instructions, which turns a lonely judgment call into a protected one.

This article is general information, not legal advice; for decisions about a specific estate, consult a licensed probate attorney in the decedent's state.

Sources:

• Title: Notice 2014-21. Publisher: Internal Revenue Service. Publication Date: March 25, 2014. URL: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf
• Title: Digital assets. Publisher: Internal Revenue Service. Publication Date: Undated; accessed August 13, 2026. URL: https://www.irs.gov/filing/digital-assets
• Title: Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, Revised. Publisher: Uniform Law Commission. Publication Date: 2015. URL: https://www.uniformlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=f7237fc4-74c2-4728-81c6-b39a91ecdf22