Imagine if, at the moment of your death, a large portion of your assets just...vanished. Or that those assets continued to exist, but your loved ones couldn’t find them, access them, or maybe didn’t even know about them. The fruits of your labors, your careful investments, forever locked away from the people you meant to have them.

If that sounds like a nightmare scenario, you should know that it has already happened to some owners of cryptocurrency who died without creating an estate plan for their digital assets. Cryptocurrency is a type of digital asset. The best known type of cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, but there are others, such as LiteCoin and Ripple.

According to the BBC, research estimates that as of early 2020, up to 3.8 million Bitcoin, with a value of about $30 billion, has been lost. Much of the loss is due to owners of the cryptocurrency dying without giving heirs a way to access these digital assets.

How Does Cryptocurrency Work?

Essentially, cryptocurrency is a digital form of currency—digital cash, if you will—that e… Read More