A digital asset is any item of value that exists only in electronic form. The category is broader than people expect: cryptocurrency and NFTs, but also domain names, monetized channels, advertising accounts, cloud storage, loyalty and airline points, photo libraries built over two decades, and the email account that functions as the recovery key for everything else.
What separates digital assets from physical property is that ownership and access come apart. A house passes to an heir who can walk through the door. A brokerage account passes to an heir who then needs credentials, a second factor, and often a device. Legal title does not open the account, and courts cannot compel a private key into existence.
Value is easy to underestimate because much of it is not financial. A family will file a claim for a bank balance and never think to ask about the cloud account holding every photograph of a parent. Those losses are permanent and, unlike money, cannot be reconstructed from a statement.
Provider terms of service complicate matters further. Many platforms treat accounts as licenses that terminate at death rather than property that transfers, and some prohibit anyone but the account holder from logging in. Access laws in most states now give fiduciaries a route to certain digital assets, but that route depends on documentation being in place beforehand.
Frequently asked
- Do digital assets automatically pass to my heirs like other property?
- Rarely, and the reasons differ by asset. Cryptocurrency you hold yourself passes to nobody if the keys are unrecoverable, regardless of what your will says. Platform accounts are often licensed rather than owned, so a provider may close the account instead of transferring it. Assets held at custodial institutions come closest to normal inheritance, but even those usually require documentation and a process your executor has to initiate.
- Should I list my passwords in my will?
- No, and this is one of the most damaging mistakes in the whole category. A will admitted to probate typically becomes a public court record, so credentials written into it are exposed to anyone who looks. It is also a static document that ages badly — passwords rotate and the version filed with the court will be stale. Assign ownership in the will and keep the credentials in an encrypted system that releases to the person you named.
- What is usually the first thing lost?
- The email account, because it is the recovery path for everything else. Lose access to it and the resets that would have opened the other accounts stop working, turning one obstacle into a cascade. That is why the primary email account and its second factor deserve first attention in any digital estate plan, ahead of assets that appear more valuable on paper.