How to plan a crypto hand-off without sharing your keys today

Start with what you actually hold

Before you write anything for anyone else, make a plain list for yourself. Which exchanges or apps hold your coins, which wallets you control yourself, and which coins sit on a hardware device at home. Most people forget at least one account they opened years ago and barely used.

Go through your email for signup confirmations and deposit receipts. That search usually turns up accounts you had forgotten. Add each one to the list with a short note on what it is for.

Write down where things are, not how to open them

The useful record names the company or wallet, the kind of coin, and roughly what it is for. It does not need a password or a seed phrase. Think of it as a map: your family needs to know which doors exist before they can work out how to open them.

For each holding, note the company name, the email address you used to sign up, and whether the account is in your name alone or shared. For a self controlled wallet, note that it exists and where the recovery words are kept, without writing the words themselves in the same place.

• The exchange or app name, and the email you signed up with
• The coin or coins involved
• Whether it is a solo account or a joint one
• For a hardware wallet, the brand and where the device lives
• For recovery words, where they are stored, described in a way only your family will understand

Keep the keys apart from the map

Your seed phrase or recovery words are the whole account. Anyone who reads them can move everything, and there is no company to call and no chargeback. That is why they should never sit in the same envelope, file or drawer as the list of accounts.

Many people write recovery words on paper or stamp them into metal and keep them somewhere separate from the device. Whatever you choose, keep the location note vague enough that a burglar reading it would not know where to go, but clear enough that the right person could work it out. A phrase like "with the tax papers at the top of the hall cupboard" does that job.

If you would rather not write the words at all, you can leave instructions that point to where they are and let your family find them when the time comes. That is slower for them, and it only works if the location is genuinely findable. Be honest with yourself about which approach fits your household.

Say who should act, and when

Name one or two people who should be told this exists. They do not need the details now. They need to know there is a Crypto section in your envelope, roughly what is in it, and that it should only be opened after a death or a serious incapacity.

It helps to say out loud what you want to happen. Do you want the coins sold, or held? Is there a wallet you would like kept rather than cashed out? Write that down in plain words. Your family will be making decisions under pressure, and a sentence from you settles a lot.

If you have chosen someone to hold a power of attorney for money matters, remember that this paper usually ends at death. It can help during an incapacity, but the people handling the estate afterwards are a different set of hands. Our guide on what an executor does explains who does what.

What your family will face later

After a death, the people handling the estate usually need to show the company proof of the death and proof of who they are. Each company has its own steps and its own forms, and these change. Tell your family to check the company's current help page rather than rely on anything you wrote years ago.

Self controlled wallets are different. There is no company and no support desk. Whoever holds the recovery words holds the account, so the person you name needs to know where they are and how to use them. A short note on which wallet app to install, and in what order to do things, saves hours of confusion.

Leave a line about records for tax and reporting where you live, and say to check the rule locally. You are not giving advice, just pointing at the fact that a sale may need to be recorded.

If you are reading this because someone has died and you cannot find any keys, our guide on crypto but no keys walks through the first steps. The wider question of where to keep the envelope itself is covered in where to keep your will.

Keep it current

Crypto accounts change more than most things. You close an exchange, open a new wallet, move coins to a different device. Each of those makes the old list partly wrong.

Pick a date once a year, perhaps your birthday or the start of a new year, and go through the list. Close out accounts you no longer use, add new ones, and check that the location note for your recovery words still matches where they are. Then update the envelope and tell your named person that it has changed.

If you use a password manager, the same yearly check applies there. Our guide on importing your passwords covers getting everything into one place, which makes this review much quicker.

A short checklist for today

1. List every exchange, app and wallet you use, with the email for each
2. Note where your recovery words are kept, without writing the words themselves
3. Decide who should be told the Crypto section exists, and tell them
4. Write one line on what you would like done with the coins
5. Put the list in the Crypto section of your envelope and set a yearly reminder to review it

None of this requires sharing a key or a password with anyone today. It is a map, a location note and a name, which is enough for your family to start when they need to.