Crypto inheritance: don't let your keys die with you

Self-custody has no recovery department. If your seed phrase dies with you, your Bitcoin is gone — not transferred, not frozen, gone. Analysts estimate that millions of coins are already stranded forever in wallets whose owners died or lost access. Crypto inheritance is the plan that prevents that — and it is mostly an information problem, not a legal one.

Why crypto is uniquely bad at inheritance

Every other asset class has an intermediary with a bereavement process: banks, brokers, land registries. Present a death certificate and a grant of probate, and ownership moves. Self-custodied crypto has none of that by design. The keys are the asset. Whoever holds them owns the coins; whoever doesn't, doesn't — including your family, your executor, and every court on earth.

That's the point of self-custody while you're alive. It becomes the problem the moment you're not: there is no password reset for a hardware wallet in a drawer that nobody can unlock.

Why the obvious solutions fail

Telling someone the seed phrase now

The moment a second person knows your seed, your security model is their security model — their phone backups, their password habits, their relationships. And there is no revocation: you can't un-tell a seed phrase, you can only move everything to a new wallet.

Putting the seed in your will

Wills are handled by multiple people (executors, clerks, solicitors) and in many jurisdictions become public documents during probate. A seed phrase in a will is a secret with a countdown timer.

A safe deposit box

Better — but access after death is slow, jurisdiction-dependent, and often requires the very probate process you wanted to bypass. It's also still a single piece of paper in a single place.

DIY secret splitting on paper

Splitting the seed across envelopes or relatives is real cryptographic thinking — but with no liveness trigger, no process, and no testing, it usually decays into "three confused people with partial notes" exactly when coordination is hardest.

The dead-man-switch approach

A dead man's switch inverts the problem: instead of handing anything over now, you seal it and stay in control. While you keep answering periodic check-ins, nothing exists anywhere in accessible form. If you permanently stop responding — death or incapacitation — the switch fires and your chosen recipient receives what you sealed. You can update, pause, or delete it at any moment before that.

The property that matters: your heir gains access only in the scenario where they should — and you lose nothing (no security, no control, no privacy) in every scenario where they shouldn't.

How Capsulene secures inheritance capsules

Capsulene key capsules are built for exactly this case:

Client-side encryption. Contents are encrypted in your browser (AES-256-GCM) before upload. Plaintext never touches Capsulene's servers.
Shamir's Secret Sharing, 2-of-3. The encryption key is split into three shares — yours, your recipient's, and Capsulene's. Any two reconstruct the key; any one alone is mathematically useless. Capsulene cannot read your capsule, and Capsulene disappearing cannot destroy it. See how the key-share exchange works.
A forgiving trigger. Check-ins by email on your rhythm — weekly to every two years, or a fixed date — with a grace period and a ladder of reminders before anything releases. One click on any reminder resets the cycle.
Two-factor on the account. Opt-in authenticator-app 2FA (every login or daily) with single-use recovery codes guards the account that controls your capsules — and passkey sign-in (your device’s fingerprint, face, or PIN) adds a phishing-resistant way in.
A recipient flow made for humans. Your heir gets an email with a retrieval link and your written instructions — not a cryptography assignment.

A practical crypto-inheritance checklist

Inventory your holdings. Wallets, exchanges, chains, approximate values, and where each key or recovery phrase physically lives.
Write the instructions first. Assume zero crypto knowledge: what this is, roughly what it's worth, who to consult, what to do and what never to do (like typing the seed into a website).
Seal the access material in a key capsule. Store recovery context, key material, or pointers to where the assets live — with the instructions alongside.
Pick the recipient deliberately. Someone you trust with the outcome, with an email address and ideally a phone number.
Choose a sustainable rhythm. A cadence you'll actually keep up — monthly or yearly beats daily-then-abandoned.
Test with a low-value capsule. Run one end-to-end with a token secret so both you and your recipient know the flow.
Keep your will in the loop. The will handles legal ownership; the capsule handles access. Mention the capsule's existence to your executor — never its contents.

Seal a key capsule with 2-of-3 secret sharing — free to start, about ten minutes.

Create your inheritance capsule

Frequently asked questions

Can Capsulene see my seed phrase or keys?

No. Key capsules are encrypted in your browser with AES-256-GCM before anything is uploaded, and the key is split with Shamir's Secret Sharing (2-of-3): you, your recipient, and Capsulene each hold one share. Any two shares unlock the capsule — one alone never can. The share Capsulene stores is useless by itself.

What if Capsulene disappears?

The 2-of-3 design covers this case: you and your recipient together hold two shares, which is enough to reconstruct the key without Capsulene. The service is one participant in the scheme, not a single point of failure.

My heir isn't technical. Will they manage?

That's exactly what the capsule's text content is for: alongside the key material, write plain-language instructions — what the asset is, where it lives, who to ask for help, and what to do first. The recipient follows an email link; no command line, no wallet software required to receive the capsule.

Is this a replacement for a will?

No. A will makes the transfer legally binding; Capsulene makes it practically possible by delivering the knowledge and key material your heirs need. Use both — and consider telling your lawyer that a capsule exists, without revealing its contents.

What check-in rhythm should I pick for an inheritance capsule?

Most holders pick monthly or yearly with a generous grace period and several reminders. The switch is deliberately biased against firing by accident: a single missed email never releases anything — you get a grace period and a ladder of reminders first, and one click resets the whole cycle.