“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Benjamin Franklin wrote that in 1789. If he were alive today, he’d probably add a third certainty:
If you don’t plan your digital inheritance, a good chunk of your wealth will simply vanish.
Every year, tax season forces us into the same ritual: pull together documents, log into accounts, reconcile statements, and finally see—clearly—what we actually own.
That’s exactly why tax time is the single best moment to get your crypto and digital inheritance sorted out. You’re already doing the hard part: creating an inventory of your assets. All you need to do is extend that thinking one step further:
“If I got hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow… who could access this, and how?”
Let’s walk through how to turn your yearly tax chore into a quiet act of love for your future heirs.
The Hidden Superpower of Tax Season: Asset Inventory
Most people think of taxes as punishment, not a planning tool. But when you look at what you actually do each year, it’s powerful:
- You list employers and income sources
- You gather bank and brokerage statements
- You track gains, losses, and cost basis
- You note property, side gigs, investments, and loans
In other words: you build a living snapshot of your financial life.
That snapshot is exactly what your heirs and executor will need one day. The gap is that:
- It usually lives in your head, scattered in email, or dumped into a folder called “2025 Taxes.”
- It rarely includes your digital footprint or crypto assets in a structured way.
So tax time becomes this moment where you almost have everything needed for a great inheritance plan—but then you hit “submit,” breathe a sigh of relief, and bury the work for another year.
Most people think of taxes as punishment, not a planning tool. But when you look at what you actually do each year, it’s powerful:
- You list employers and income sources
- You gather bank and brokerage statements
- You track gains, losses, and cost basis
- You note property, side gigs, investments, and loans
In other words: you build a living snapshot of your financial life.
That snapshot is exactly what your heirs and executor will need one day. The gap is that:
- It usually lives in your head, scattered in email, or dumped into a folder called “2025 Taxes.”
- It rarely includes your digital footprint or crypto assets in a structured way.
So tax time becomes this moment where you almost have everything needed for a great inheritance plan—but then you hit “submit,” breathe a sigh of relief, and bury the work for another year.
The Missing Column: Your Digital and Crypto Assets
Traditional estate planning is still stuck in a world of:
- House
- Bank accounts
- Brokerage
- Retirement accounts
- Insurance
But your actual life now includes:
- Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other tokens
- NFTs and digital art
- Assets on DeFi platforms and L2s
- Staked assets and yield strategies
- Exchange accounts (even the “small” ones you forgot about)
- Password managers
- Encrypted notes and backups
- 2FA apps and hardware keys
- Cloud storage with important documents, photos, and IP
For your heirs, the hardest part is not taxes—it’s discovery and access:
- Discovery – “What did they have, and where is it?”
- Access – “How do we unlock it without their passwords and keys?”
Without answers to those two questions, a perfectly legal, well-structured estate still leaks value. With crypto, “leaks” usually means “gone forever.”
The Brutal Truth: Estate Law Can’t Recover a Lost Private Key
With traditional finance, losing a password is annoying but fixable:
- There’s a helpdesk.
- There’s KYC.
- There’s a paper trail.
With crypto, if your heirs don’t have:
- The seed phrase
- The private key
- The social recovery method
- Or the hardware wallet PIN + recovery
…then the assets are effectively burned.
Death certificates, probate orders, and court documents mean nothing to a blockchain. The network doesn’t know you died; it only knows valid signatures.
That’s why crypto inheritance must be designed in advance, at the same level of care you put into optimizing your tax bill.
Turning Tax Prep Into Inheritance Prep: A Simple 6-Step Ritual
You don’t need to become a lawyer or a security engineer. You just need to add a few extra steps to what you’re already doing each year.
1. Expand Your Asset Inventory to Include Digital
While you’re gathering statements and logging into platforms for tax reporting, create one master inventory that includes:
- All exchanges you use (even “test” accounts with small balances)
- All wallets (hardware, mobile, browser, paper)
- All major on-chain positions (staking, DeFi, L2s, NFTs)
- Any custodial platforms (CeFi yield platforms, centralized staking, etc.)
- Critical digital services:
- Password manager(s)
- Cloud storage that contains important docs
- Domain registrars, app store accounts, creator platforms (where there’s IP or revenue)
Treat this like a crypto & digital asset schedule to sit alongside your traditional tax and estate documents.
2. Label the “Where” and the “How”
For each item in your inventory, add two simple pieces of information:
- Where is it?
- Exchange name, wallet type, protocol, or chain
- How is it secured?
- Hardware wallet, seed phrase in a safe, multi-sig, social recovery, etc.
You’re not putting the actual secrets in this list—just the map, not the keys.
Think of it like this: if you weren’t around, could your executor at least know which hills to dig under?
3. Decide Who Should Ultimately Inherit What
Estate planning sounds technical, but at core it’s emotional:
- Who do you want to benefit from your Bitcoin, ETH, or NFTs?
- Are there assets that are more meaningful to specific people—e.g., digital art, ENS names, in-game assets, or creator royalties?
- Do you want a portion of your crypto to go to a foundation, DAO, or non-profit?
You can formalize distribution wishes in:
- Your will
- A letter of wishes
- A separate digital asset memo that your executor knows about
The key is that tax time already has you thinking in percentages and allocations—just extend that mindset one step into “what if I wasn’t here next year?”
4. Establish a Secure Way to Pass On Secrets (Without Sharing Them Now)
This is the biggest practical challenge:
How do you make sure your heirs can access your keys only when they’re truly supposed to?
Some approaches people use:
- Multi-sig wallets where one key is held by a trusted person or entity
- Shamir’s Secret Sharing or other threshold schemes, where parts of a secret are split among multiple “guardians”
- Dedicated crypto inheritance tools that combine encryption, sharding, and social recovery
- Estate-aware password manager plans, where a trusted contact can gain access after a verified event
What you don’t want to do is:
- Put seed phrases directly in a will (it becomes public in probate in many jurisdictions)
- Email your seed phrase to yourself or someone else
- Put everything in a single safe that no one even knows exists
The ideal pattern is:
Your inventory and intentions are discoverable,
your keys and instructions are recoverable but strongly protected,
and the whole system doesn’t depend on any one person’s memory.
5. Document “How to Use This” in Human Language
Your heirs might not be crypto-native. They might be terrified of doing something wrong.
So along with your technical plan, add a plain-English guide:
- “If I’m gone, here’s who to contact first.”
- “Here’s where to find the inventory of my accounts and wallets.”
- “These people/platforms have pieces that can help unlock access.”
- “Before moving anything, get a reputable crypto-savvy lawyer or advisor to help.”
- “Do not share seed phrases in email, text, or random websites promising recovery.”
You can think of this as the “Meet Joe Black” note to your future self and your family—the part the lawyers and accountants usually skip, but the humans desperately need.
6. Make It an Annual Habit: “Death and Taxes Day”
Finally, turn this into a ritual.
Once a year—when you do your taxes:
- Update your asset inventory (including new wallets, protocols, or accounts).
- Check that your inheritance mechanism (social recovery / Shamir / multi-sig / tool of choice) still works and still involves the right people.
- Revise your instructions and wishes if relationships or holdings have changed.
You don’t need to obsess over it all year. Just pair it with something you’re legally forced to do anyway.
If death and taxes are unavoidable, you might as well hijack tax day to make death a little less chaotic for the people you love.
Why This Matters More Each Year
Every year:
- More of your net worth migrates from the physical world to the digital one.
- More platforms, protocols, and wallets come into your life.
- More of your story—photos, messages, creations, IP—lives behind encrypted logins.
Failing to plan doesn’t just mean your family may pay more tax.
In the digital world, it means they may never even know what’s missing.
A thoughtful crypto and digital inheritance plan is:
- A financial decision (don’t burn assets by neglect)
- A security decision (don’t leak secrets prematurely)
- And above all, a love decision (don’t leave a puzzle no one can solve)
Tax season hands you the raw material for this plan every year. The next step is simply deciding:
“This is the year I stop pretending I’ll live forever—and I make sure my digital life is as well-organized for my heirs as it is for the tax office.”
If you’d like, I can now:
- Add a short intro blurb about Vault12 / your product as the “how” piece
- Turn this into a shorter LinkedIn version or an email newsletter
- Or create a 5-point checklist graphic you can use as a lead magnet: “Turn Tax Time Into Crypto Inheritance Time”
