An estimated 3 to 4 million Bitcoin are permanently lost. Some of those belong to people who are no longer alive — people who took self-custody seriously but never made a plan for what happens next.
This is the dark side of "be your own bank." When you remove intermediaries, you also remove the safety nets. There's no bank to call, no probate court that can reset a private key. If your family doesn't know how to access your crypto — or even that it exists — it may as well not exist.
The challenge is that crypto inheritance sits at an uncomfortable intersection. You need your secrets to be accessible after you're gone, but completely secure while you're alive. Traditional estate planning tools (wills, trusts, lawyers) weren't designed for bearer assets that exist as pure information.
This is where threshold-based secret sharing becomes invaluable. With a 3-of-5 Shamir split, you can distribute shares to your spouse, your attorney, a safety deposit box, a trusted friend, and a sealed envelope in your home safe. No single party can access your Bitcoin, but any three working together can.
seQRets' inheritance planning feature (available in the Desktop app) guides you through this process step by step. It helps you choose an appropriate threshold, generate labeled shares, and create documentation that your heirs can actually follow — without exposing them to your secrets prematurely.
The conversation with your family doesn't have to include private keys. It just needs to include: "I own Bitcoin, here's where to find the instructions, and here are the people who hold the shares." That's it. The math handles the rest.
If you hold any meaningful amount of Bitcoin, inheritance planning isn't a nice-to-have. It's a responsibility to the people you'd leave behind.