First published: 08/25/2024
Last updated: 05/04/2025
Have you ever wondered what will happen to your digital assets after your death? Will your beneficiaries be able to recover this wealth, and if so, how?
Between 2.78 million and 3.79 million bitcoins are currently estimated to be lost. This represents between 17% and 23% of the total circulating supply of BTC. Yet, just like any other property, digital assets can legally be transmitted to your heirs and must be reported during estate execution. However, reclaiming access to digital assets in the absence of estate planning can prove to be highly complex, or even impossible, when they are held in private personal wallets and remain unknown to the heirs. Fortunately, structured solutions exist to securely pass your digital assets down to your beneficiaries.
Are Your Digital Assets At Risk of Falling Into Unclaimed Escheat?
Concretely, when you create a private cryptocurrency wallet, a master private key or seed phrase is assigned to you. This phrase must remain completely secret, as it acts as the sole cryptographic title of ownership for the wallet containing all your digital assets.
To keep digital assets secure, it is strongly advised to never disclose your private key during your lifetime, because if anyone else gains knowledge of it, they instantly become a legal co-owner of the funds. Conversely, if you lose your private key, you permanently lose all access to your digital assets.
This operational reality becomes dramatically more complicated in the event of death, because to claim and distribute the digital wealth, the heirs must be in physical possession of this private key. Without it, it is mathematically impossible for them to unlock access to the wallet hosting the assets.
If you choose to store your digital assets on a managed wallet hosted by Paymium, you do not have to worry about this issue. The private keys associated with your cryptocurrency addresses are securely retained by the platform completely offline in cold storage, ensuring maximum historical security. Furthermore, Paymium stands as the oldest continuous cryptocurrency exchange platform in the world.
On the other hand, if you have opted for total autonomy and absolute financial sovereignty by securing your digital assets using your own private custody methods, you must take the necessary measures to ensure their transition to your beneficiaries. Failure to do so means they will be physically unable to inherit them.
To address this expanding financial need, Paymium has partnered with Legapass, a leader in estate planning certified by the Higher Council of the Notariat. Together, they deliver joint solutions for the identification, transmission, and seamless recovery of digital assets during successions.
How to Transmit Your Digital Assets with Absolute Security
While digital assets fall perfectly within the legal scope of traditional inheritance, it has historically been up to the beneficiaries to figure out how to physically recover the funds. Up until now, notary publics, who are legally authorized to handle estate distribution, lacked the technological tools required to manage this specific asset class.
Compounding this difficulty are the stark differences in operational policies depending on the geographical location of an exchange. For instance, with certain foreign offshore platforms, heirs are required to already be in possession of the exact username and account password of the deceased owner just to initiate a claim.
By partnering with Legapass, Paymium delivers a streamlined, comprehensive solution to safeguard the transmission of your holdings. You can map out your entire asset portfolio and deposit your access credentials, passphrases, and sensitive cryptographic data directly into offline digital vaults hosted locally in France. This infrastructure proves invaluable to your heirs, particularly if you manage multiple distinct storage profiles or secure your private keys independently via self-custody.
Your sensitive access data is never revealed to your beneficiaries during your lifetime; it is unlocked exclusively upon your passing. Furthermore, no single employee or third party can read your data in plaintext, as it remains heavily encrypted until restitution occurs under the strict supervision of a sworn trusted third party. If you wish to implement an additional layer of security on top of these measures, you can split your seed phrase into two separate fragments, storing one half inside your secure Legapass vault and writing the remaining half directly into your physical last will and testament.
What Happens to Your Assets If You Have Planned Nothing?
In scenarios where a digital asset holder passes away without preparing an estate roadmap, the notary public and the heirs face two critical hurdles: how to accurately identify the specific exchange platforms where the accounts are held, and how to physically retrieve the funds.
Whether the heirs were close to the deceased or not, they are rarely aware of the exact scope of their digital investments. Even when they know an investment exists, they rarely know which specific exchange platforms were used, let alone how to technically manage this type of wealth. Furthermore, the majority of surveyed notary publics admit that prior to the introduction of specialized digital discovery tools, they were completely unequipped to handle this asset class and routinely found themselves at an operational dead end.
The Legapass Radar system operates as an advanced discovery tool that complements the asset-searching networks already deployed by notary offices, saving significant time by integrating digital asset tracking directly into standard estate workflows. Beyond identifying the specific platforms used by the deceased, the solution provides step-by-step guidance to families to help them close outstanding accounts and recover the assets, centralizing the recovered capital onto the secure Paymium platform. From there, heirs can choose to distribute the inheritance directly in cryptocurrency or convert the inherited digital assets into Euros.
Data shows that between 65% and 80% of cryptocurrencies are held on exchange platforms like Paymium. This discovery tool assists notary publics in detecting these platform accounts so they can be legally integrated into the estate assets. Conversely, for the remaining 20% to 35% of assets held by users who choose to manage their private keys via independent self-custody, owners can proactively secure their generational transmission using a dedicated digital estate planning vault.
This article was co-written by our partner Legapass.
Key Takeaways:
- Unplanned digital assets face a high risk of permanent escheatment due to the irreversible nature of cryptographic keys.
- Digital asset accounts held on local, registered platforms can be legally claimed by heirs through a notary public using standard legal documentation.
- Self-custody assets require proactive estate planning, as third-party platforms and legal institutions cannot bypass or recover a missing seed phrase.
- The partnership between Paymium and Legapass bridges the gap between cryptography and traditional inheritance law, giving notary publics automated tools to locate and recover digital wealth.
FAQ
Are digital assets subject to inheritance taxes in France?
Yes. Digital assets form an integral part of the deceased's global estate. They must mandatorily be disclosed within the inheritance assets by the executing notary public and are subject to traditional inheritance tax rates according to the current fiscal schedule in force.
Can a notary public recover cryptocurrencies without having the private keys?
Only if the assets are stored on a regulated exchange platform (such as Paymium). Upon presentation of the required legal succession documents, the platform can authorize the transfer of funds to the heirs. If the cryptocurrencies are held in private self-custody wallets and the deceased left no private keys or seed phrases behind, they are mathematically lost forever.
How does the Legapass solution protect my sensitive data during my lifetime?
Your account credentials and seed phrase fragments are encrypted locally on your device using a Zero-Knowledge security architecture before being stored inside offline digital vaults hosted in France. Nobody can read your data in plaintext. The encrypted information is only decrypted and transmitted to your designated heirs upon your confirmed passing, under the direct supervision of a notary public.
What exactly is the Legapass Radar tool for notary publics?
It is a specialized discovery and lookup tool that allows notary publics to officially query digital exchange platforms to detect the existence of active accounts registered under the name of the deceased. This automated audit prevents digital wealth from being overlooked, ensuring it does not fall permanently into unclaimed escheatment.
