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When people think of digital assets, they tend to think of blue chip cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, ETH, XRP, and SOL to your favorite meme coins like DOGE, BONK, and WIF. But it includes far more than that. Any online account you have, such as email, social media, and cloud storage, is also considered a digital asset. Digital assets can hold significant value—just look at the price of Bitcoin now, for example—and must be addressed in estate planning to ensure proper transfer to beneficiaries.
For cryptocurrencies, key considerations include how they are stored—whether kept by a brokerage or exchange, in your own personal hot wallet, or in cold storage. Proper planning involves creating secure access protocols and integrating these assets into the estate plan, similar to traditional assets, through beneficiary designations or trusts.
Digital assets can bypass probate in Virginia under certain circumstances. Most digital assets, such as cryptocurrency held in an account on Robinhood or Coinbase, allow you to designate a payable-on-death (POD) beneficiary. When this is set up, the asset transfers directly to the named beneficiary upon your death, avoiding the probate process entirely.
However, if you hold digital assets in your own wallet, how they are treated depends on how your estate plan is structured. Such assets are typically considered tangible personal property and would need to be addressed through a will or trust. Whether these assets bypass probate depends on how your estate plan designates their distribution.
Virginia does not recognize digital wills and, as such, requires a physical signature on a physical legal document with ink.
Managing digital assets in estate plans comes with unique challenges, primarily because so many who buy and hold them do so in an attempt to avoid government oversight. This focus on security and anonymity can make it difficult to plan for their distribution after death.
One major issue is ensuring accessibility. If you have your assets stored in a secure location, like a hardware wallet, losing the device or access credentials—the private keys—can result in permanent loss. Stories about people losing access to fortunes in cryptocurrency due to misplaced hardware or forgotten credentials highlight this risk.
We’ll help you address these challenges by creating clear, secure strategies for managing and distributing digital assets:
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