Digital asset inheritance and estate planning

Due to blockchain and tokenisation, wealth is no longer limited to bank accounts, share certificates and file cabinet property documents. Our assets, from tokenised government bonds and stablecoins to tokenised real estate, are increasingly digital and accessible — exclusively via cryptographic keys, passwords and on digital exchanges/platforms. Borderless money transfers, fractional ownership of high-value assets and quick worldwide settlement are outstanding benefits of this change. But this all equally raises new questions as concerns one of the oldest human regarding what happens to our wealth after death. Historically, estate planning has focused on tangible property and identifiable accounts; executors might find a bank, obtain deeds and pursue probate processes — difficult in the age of digital money and tokenised assets. After all, unshared secret keys, expired two-factor authentication codes and badly drafted wills can lock up capital forever.

Source: Teamblockchain

When people hear the term, digital assets, their minds often jump to volatile cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. But the modern digital asset universe is far broader, particularly in the context of estate planning. At its core, a digital asset is any item of value stored in a digital format, owned or controlled by an individual and, in the financial realm…