What happens to your Bitcoin when you die? Digital assets complicating estate planning process
- Condominium Group
- Dec 30, 2007
- 1 min read
What happens to your Bitcoin when you die? Digital assets complicating estate planning process
December 31, 2007
When it comes to digital assets, having an electronic estate trustee is key
One of the earliest transactions involving Bitcoin was the indirect exchange of 10,000 units of the then-little-known cryptocurrency for two pizzas in 2010. Hopefully the pizzas were very good, because those Bitcoins are now worth about US$100 million.
While the story is now part of Bitcoin lore, it serves to illustrate just how extreme the growth in the cryptocurrency’s value has been.
That rise has added a new dimension and urgency to a question that has been complicating the estate-planning process in recent years: What happens to your digital property when you die?
Since the concept of digital property is so new, it is rarely addressed in wills, often leaving ill-equipped trustees or family members to attempt to navigate a web of online accounts and assets.
This is an excerpt from an article that appeared on FinancialPost.com.
