In short
Crypto on an exchange is the easiest kind to inherit, provided your heirs know the account exists. Almost no exchange lets you name a beneficiary, so the account goes through the estate with a death certificate and probate papers. Put every account on your inventory, keep the two-factor codes recoverable, use a beneficiary setting where one exists, and don’t let an account go dormant for years.
How it will go for your heirs
Your heirs won’t log in as you. They’ll send the exchange a death certificate, a document showing who may act for the estate and their own ID, and the exchange will move or sell the assets. It works, but it takes weeks to months and the exchange decides the terms. Claiming crypto from an exchange account describes the process from their side.
Two things decide whether that goes smoothly: whether your heirs know the account exists, and whether the exchange still has it.
Who lets you name a beneficiary
As of October 2026, checked against each company’s own pages:
| Company | Beneficiary? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| River | Yes, transfer on death | Primary and contingent beneficiaries; the beneficiary opens a River account and passes identity checks to receive the bitcoin (River’s TOD terms) |
| Unchained | Yes, for personal vaults | The beneficiary still needs access to one of your keys; the designation doesn’t replace it |
| Binance | Partly | An “Emergency Contact” setting, added in 2025, lets you name someone Binance will contact when your account goes quiet (Cointelegraph); the transfer itself goes through the Inheritance Appeal, which Binance says usually takes one to two months, longer in complex cases |
| Robinhood | Not for crypto | Beneficiaries exist for its brokerage accounts, but “any crypto assets will be distributed as a part of your estate” |
| Coinbase | No | “Coinbase doesn’t currently support naming a beneficiary for individual accounts” |
| Kraken | No | “Kraken doesn’t currently offer the option to add a beneficiary to an account” |
| Gemini | No | “At this time, we do not offer the ability to designate beneficiaries” |
| Bitvavo | No | Pays out to one heir only, by bank transfer or to one Bitvavo account; the heirs divide it among themselves |
| Revolut | No | Crypto is sold: “liquidated and the equivalent value in fiat will be credited to the main balance” |
| PayPal and Venmo | No | Executor or administrator only; neither page says how crypto is handled, so ask |
| Swan | Only on its IRA | Retirement accounts have their own beneficiary forms |
I found no beneficiary option at Cash App, Crypto.com, Bitstamp or eToro; heirs contact support with the estate documents. Retirement accounts that hold crypto (a Swan or other IRA in the US, a self-managed super fund in Australia) follow retirement rules, which usually include a beneficiary nomination that overrides the will. Fill it in.
Five things to do now
- List every account on your inventory, with the email address and phone number it’s registered to. Old accounts count: the one you opened in 2017 and forgot may still hold something. The inventory template has a row for each.
- Keep the two-factor codes recoverable. If your authenticator app lives on a phone nobody can unlock, your heirs don’t need it (they claim through the estate), but you do if you lose the phone. Store the backup codes with your other secrets. Keep the phone number alive after a death: text-message codes go there, and a cancelled number can be reassigned to a stranger.
- Use a beneficiary setting where it exists, and check it after a marriage, divorce or birth. River’s terms, for example, say a divorce doesn’t change a designation by itself (River).
- Decide how much belongs on an exchange at all. An exchange is convenient for heirs and a risk for you: if it fails or freezes accounts, your heirs stand in the same queue as everyone else. Many people keep what they trade on an exchange and move savings to a hardware wallet with a plan around it. For bitcoin, the sister site walks through moving coins from an exchange to a multisig.
- Don’t let an account go dormant. See below.
Dormant accounts can go to the state
In the United States, an account with no activity and no contact from the owner for a few years is “unclaimed property” that the exchange must hand to the state. Coinbase explains that the period is “typically 1–5 years depending on the state and asset type”, that it sends a notice first, and that some states “require Coinbase to convert some or all crypto assets to US dollars” before the transfer (Coinbase). California changed its law so that from 2026 crypto is handed to the state as crypto rather than sold first, though the state itself may convert it to cash about 18 months later (Thomson Reuters); most states still sell. The money isn’t lost, but heirs then have to claim it from the state instead, and a conversion to dollars can be a taxable sale.
The fix is trivial: log in once a year, and keep the email address on the account working. The UK has no equivalent scheme for crypto, but a closed email address makes any claim harder everywhere.
Staked or locked balances
Crypto that’s staked through an exchange can’t be moved instantly. The waiting period is set by the network, not the exchange; Kraken says the unbonding periods for its bonded products “range from 3 days to 28 days depending on the asset” (Kraken), and exits from Ethereum staking can take longer when the queue is busy. Your heirs’ claim will take months anyway, so this rarely matters, but note on the inventory which balances are staked so nobody panics when the number looks locked.
Apps that hold crypto for you
Revolut, PayPal, Cash App and similar apps hold the crypto in their own name. For inheritance they behave like a bank: the executor sends documents and the app pays out. Revolut says outright that it sells the crypto and pays money; most others don’t say. If you’d rather your heirs received the crypto itself, keep it somewhere that can hand it over in kind.