Coinbase account of someone who died: how to claim it

Before you start

• There’s no beneficiary to fall back on. “Coinbase doesn’t currently support naming a beneficiary for individual accounts.” Ownership follows the will, a trust or the intestacy rules (Coinbase Help).
• The account is frozen. Under the US User Agreement, once Coinbase learns of a death “we will freeze your Coinbase Account and during this time, no transactions may be completed” (User Agreement, section 6.9). The holdings stay in the account, but nothing can be sold or moved, so their value still rises and falls with the market.
• The claimant needs their own Coinbase account. The same section says the estate’s fiduciary “will be required to open a new Coinbase Account in order to gain access to the contents”.
• Who counts as the fiduciary. Normally the person named in the probate documents. If nobody has been appointed, Coinbase may accept a person entitled to inherit under a will, living trust or small estate affidavit, or it may ask for a court order. (The freeze and new-account rules come from Coinbase’s US User Agreement.)
• Don’t sign in as the deceased, even if you know the password.

The documents

• The official death certificate.
• The document that gives you authority: probate, letters testamentary, letters of administration, an affidavit for collection or a small estate affidavit.
• A current government photo ID for each person named in that document.
• A signed letter from the person or people named in it, directing Coinbase to transfer the assets to a specified Coinbase account and giving that account’s email address. The sample claim letter covers the rest.

Coinbase’s list is written for the US. It publishes no separate list for the UK or Europe, so send the local equivalent, such as a grant of probate or a certificate of inheritance, and expect follow-up questions.

Step by step

1. Sign in to your own Coinbase account, or create one.
2. Open the Executor Services form. The help article links to it.
3. Upload the documents and fill in the required fields.
4. Select Generate verification code and follow the instructions on the form to verify the request.
5. Once the request is verified, Coinbase support takes up your case.

Keep a note of the date you submitted and any case number.

What the estate receives

The assets go to the Coinbase account named in the signed letter. The User Agreement describes the whole account being moved to the fiduciary’s new account before the freeze ends. Coinbase doesn’t publish a cash payout option to the estate. Once the crypto is in the executor’s account, it can be kept, sent elsewhere or sold like any other holding, following the will and the estate’s adviser.

For tax, the estate usually needs the value on the date of death. Coinbase doesn’t say whether it issues a statement for that date, so ask for one when support contacts you, and see Valuing crypto at the date of death.

How long it takes

Coinbase publishes no timeline. On a 2022 podcast, lawyers at the US firm Proskauer said it took “many emails and a few months” just to get responses from Coinbase on a client’s estate (Proskauer). That was before the current online form, so treat it as a worst case. Get the court or probate document under way early; Coinbase can’t act without it.

Good to know

• Coinbase Wallet is a different thing. Coinbase’s self-custody wallet app (called the Base app from mid-2025 to September 2026) is controlled from the phone, not by Coinbase. Executor Services can’t reach it. Getting in needs the person’s passkey, often synced to their Apple or Google account, or their recovery phrase. See Found a hardware wallet or seed phrase?
• Fake support is everywhere. Type coinbase.com yourself rather than following a link or an ad. Real support never asks for a password, a two-factor code or a recovery phrase, or for crypto to be sent anywhere to “unlock” an account. Recovery scams.