Lost Bitcoin · Guides

Your Spouse or Parent Passed Away and Had Bitcoin: First Steps for Families and Executors

First: we're sorry for your loss. This guide can wait until you're ready — nothing here is urgent this week, and the worst mistakes happen when grieving families rush. When you are ready, here's the calm version.

The three rules that protect everything else

• Don't delete their email, and don't wipe their computer. Purchase confirmations, exchange accounts, wallet backups and password-reset paths all run through the deceased's email and devices. Tidying up too early is the #1 way families accidentally destroy the trail.
• Only the executor should act. A will grants authority — it never grants access — and the lawful route to exchange accounts is the exchange's own deceased-account process (death certificate + proof of authority), not logging in as the deceased.
• Expect scam messages, and ignore all of them. Bereaved families who post anywhere about inherited crypto get targeted by fake "recovery services" within minutes — the FBI has warned about exactly this. No legitimate service DMs you first, charges an upfront "release fee," or asks for a seed phrase.

Where Bitcoin hides in an estate

• Tax returns and the accountant's file — crypto purchases and disposals are often declared; this is frequently how families first learn it existed at all.
• Email — purchase confirmations, withdrawal notices, hardware wallet order emails, exchange statements.
• Bank and card statements — transfers to exchanges name the company and the dates.
• Devices — an old laptop or phone with a wallet app; a small USB-like hardware wallet (Ledger/Trezor) in a desk or safe. Do not guess a hardware wallet's PIN — a few wrong tries can wipe it.
• Paper — a folder of printouts, a notebook with 12–24 words written in it. If you find words: don't photograph them, don't send them to anyone, don't type them into any website. Store the paper securely and treat it like cash.

What an executor actually needs

An estate needs a documented inventory: what accounts, wallets and addresses are known; what's confirmed on the public blockchain; what's a lead; and what's honestly unknown. That documentation is exactly what an investigation produces — evidence the estate file, the accountant, and the beneficiaries can rely on, without anyone promising the Bitcoin can be recovered. A single address found in the papers can be checked with a Wallet Report ($4.99). This guide is general information, not legal advice — for the estate's legal questions, your estate lawyer is the right call.

Questions people ask

The will mentions Bitcoin but there are no passwords. Is it gone?
Not automatically. The trail is usually in email, statements, tax records and devices — that's the investigation.

Can we just use their password to log in?
Use the exchange's deceased-account/estate process instead. It's the lawful route and it protects the executor.

We found a hardware wallet but no PIN and no words. Now what?
Preserve it untouched. An investigation can document what exists and what the realistic options are — including, sometimes, that access may not be possible. Honest answers beat false hope.

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