Digital Asset Protection
Digital assets have two ways to disappear, and neither involves a thief. A key lost is a fortune gone. A holder gone is a fortune lost. Most people have solved neither.
Request a consultationThere is no bank to call.
Every other asset class has a safety net. This one does not.
One key. One point of collapse.
A single seed phrase, held in a single place, protected by a single person. A fire, a theft, a forgotten password, and the assets are unreachable. Not stolen. Simply gone.
You are the only one who knows.
If you die tomorrow, can your family reach what you hold? Probate cannot recover a key. A court cannot compel a blockchain. Without a plan, the assets cease to exist for the people you left them to.
Four questions worth answering.
If any of these gives you pause, the structure is not finished.
If you were gone tomorrow, could your family reach your holdings?
Does any single person, device, or document control everything?
Is anything written down in a place a burglar would look?
Would your executor even know what you hold, or where?
Structure, not advice.
A plan you can hold, not a memo you file away.
Custody architecture
Multi-signature and institutional custody, designed so that no single loss is fatal.
Key succession
A defined path for who gets access, when, and under what conditions. Written to work when you cannot explain it.
Trusts and holding structures
Special-purpose vehicles that hold digital assets, coordinated with the wider estate.
Tax and reporting
Cost basis, multi-chain reporting, and cross-border obligations, handled before they become problems.
Worth reading first.
Practical guides on holding digital assets so they survive you.
Crypto Multisig Trusts for Secure Estate Planning.
How multi-signature custody and directed trusts hold digital assets in a structure that survives theft, incapacity, and succession.
Read the guideRevocable Living Trusts for Crypto.
Why a living trust can move digital assets to the people you choose without probate, and what it takes to make one actually work.
Read the guideNew York Asset Protection Attorney for Tech & Crypto.
Structures for founders and holders whose wealth sits in assets the law is still learning to handle.
Read the guideFrequently asked.
It protects against one thing. A hardware wallet keeps an attacker out. It does nothing about the two failures that matter most.
If the device is lost and the seed phrase with it, the assets are unreachable. And if you are gone, the wallet is a locked box no one can open.
Please do not. A will becomes a public document in probate. The seed phrase would be handed to anyone who cares to read it.
It also does not solve incapacity, only death. There are better ways to do this, and they are not complicated once designed.
Not always. For some holdings, a well-designed custody and succession plan is sufficient.
For larger positions, a purpose-built structure usually earns its keep, and it can be coordinated with the asset protection and cross-border work already in place.
Perhaps. It is worth checking what “handled” means in practice.
A conventional estate plan can name a beneficiary. It cannot, on its own, give that beneficiary the ability to reach a wallet. Those are different problems, and the second is the one that loses the assets.
The best time to do this is while nothing is wrong.
A confidential consultation on what you hold and how it should be held.
Request a consultation