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AmberKey

Playbook

Crypto Exchanges: Probate, Not a Seed Phrase

Platform claims verified July 26, 2026

What this mechanism is

Crypto held at an exchange is the mirror image of crypto in your own wallet.

A self-custodied wallet is bearer property: the seed phrase is the asset, and if it is lost the coins are gone with no company to appeal to. See the crypto-wallets playbook for that case. An exchange holds the keys for you, so there is a company, there is a process, and nothing is lost forever. What there is instead is probate.

Coinbase, the largest US exchange, is explicit: it supports no beneficiary designation, no transfer-on-death registration, and no trust titling on any account type. Every account passes through the estate, which for most families means a court. Other major exchanges are broadly the same.

So the estate task here is not escrowing a secret. It is making sure your executor knows the account exists, and giving them a clean paper trail to claim it. An exchange account nobody knows about is the failure mode: unlike a wallet, it leaves no artifact in your house at all.

Set it up now

  1. List every exchange you have ever funded, including ones you stopped using. Dormant accounts still hold balances, and old ones are the ones families miss.
  2. On the account card (Layer 1), record: the exchange, the account email, and roughly what is held there. Your executor needs to know it exists and is worth pursuing. Approximate value is enough; precision ages badly.
  3. Note whether the exchange offers any beneficiary or inheritance feature. Most do not, but the market moves and a feature that appears is worth using the day it does.
  4. Decide whether it should be at an exchange at all. If the balance is meaningful and you are not actively trading, moving it into self-custody with the seed escrowed in Layer 2 converts a months-long probate claim into a recovery your circle can perform directly. That is a real tradeoff involving your own key-management risk, not a recommendation, but it is the decision that most changes the outcome.
  5. Escrow login credentials and recovery codes in Layer 2 if you like, for statements and tax records. Read the Gotchas first: they are not the transfer mechanism, and using them as one can harm the executor’s position.
  6. Keep transaction history exports with your tax records. The estate will need cost basis, and reconstructing it after the fact is painful.

What AmberKey stores

  • Layer 1 (metadata): which exchanges, the account email, approximate holdings, and a pointer to this playbook. This is the part that actually matters, because discovery is the hard problem.
  • Layer 2 (bearer secrets): credentials, 2FA recovery codes, and any exported transaction history you want preserved.
  • Do not store the credentials as the plan. The exchange will not accept a login as authority, and the executor gains nothing legally by having it.

What your survivors do

  1. Do not log in as the deceased, even with working credentials. Exchanges treat it as unauthorized access, it can jeopardise the claim, and it is unnecessary because the formal process exists.
  2. Open the exchange’s estate or executor process. Coinbase runs an online Executor Services form through its Help Center; you sign in with your own account, not the deceased’s, to file.
  3. Assemble the documents below before filing. These claims stall on missing paperwork far more often than on disputes.
  4. Include a signed letter directing the exchange what to do with the balance and where it should go, with the destination account details. Exchanges ask for this explicitly and claims sit idle without it.
  5. Expect the assets to be liquidated or transferred to an account the estate controls. Ask which, because it has tax consequences the estate will own.
  6. Get date-of-death valuations for every asset held. Crypto moves enough that this genuinely matters for the estate’s basis.

Required documents

Certified death certificate; probate documents (letters testamentary, letters of administration, an affidavit for collection, or a small-estate affidavit, depending on the estate’s size and state); government photo ID for each person named in those probate documents; and a signed letter of direction naming the destination account for the balance.

Expected timeline

Gated by the court, not the exchange. Weeks if a small-estate affidavit is enough, months if full probate is required. The exchange’s own review after complete documents arrive is typically days to weeks.

Gotchas

  • No beneficiary designation means no shortcut. Unlike a brokerage account, you cannot name someone on a form and skip probate. If that gap is the problem, self-custody is the answer, not a feature request.
  • Probate is slow and crypto is volatile. Months can pass between death and the estate gaining control, with no ability to act. Size your exposure knowing that.
  • An unknown account is an unrecoverable account in practice. Exchanges do not contact families. If it is not on a card, nobody will go looking.
  • Small-estate affidavits have value ceilings. A balance that appreciates past the threshold before the claim completes can force the estate into full probate.
  • 2FA does not protect the estate, it obstructs it. The formal claim bypasses it entirely, which is another reason not to plan around logging in.
  • Exchange accounts are not covered by deposit insurance. An exchange failure during a slow probate is a real risk and not one the estate can act on.