Digital inheritance without a digital footprint: how to pass Bitcoin to family without revealing savings - ForkLog: cryptocurrencies, AI, singularity, future

# Digital inheritance without a digital trail: how to pass Bitcoin to family without revealing holdings

Traditional inheritance methods require disclosing information about assets to notaries and lawyers. For a Bitcoin holder who has spent years building transaction privacy, this can negate all efforts.

In this article, together with the Mixer.Money team, we will explore how to transfer cryptocurrency to family while maintaining confidentiality.

The Dead Man’s Chest

According to River, approximately 1.57 million BTC are considered lost forever due to forgotten keys and lost access. Adding Satoshi Nakamoto’s coins (968,000 BTC), the number rises to 2.53 million BTC — about 12.1% of the total supply.

Source: River. In June 2025, Fidelity Digital Assets analyst Zak Waynewright noted that the “ancient supply” of Bitcoin — coins that haven’t moved on the blockchain for over 10 years — exceeded 3.4 million BTC (17% of the total supply). On average, 566 BTC per day are classified as “ancient,” while after the 2024 halving, miners produce about 450 BTC daily. For the first time, the “aging” rate of supply surpasses the rate of new issuance. Fidelity estimates that by 2028, the share of “ancient” coins could reach 20%, and by 2035, 30%.

According to a Cremation Institute survey, 89% of crypto investors worry about what will happen to their assets after death, but only 23% have a documented inheritance plan. Crypto holders are four times less likely to create a will compared to other investors.

However, legal inheritance procedures require disclosure of information — as a result, lawyers, notaries, and tax authorities gain access to asset data.

“Seed phrases and other sensitive data should never be included in a will simply for security reasons. It’s better to inform close ones in advance for unforeseen circumstances and additionally create a memo with instructions for wallet access,” — recommend Mixer.Money.

It’s advisable to detail the operation of the inheritance tools listed below. Their essence is that the owner retains full control over assets until death, and after, relatives gain access without revealing unnecessary information.

How Bitcoin inheritance services work

Two main approaches have emerged in the market for transferring crypto assets while preserving privacy: commercial multisig solutions with assistance and on-chain wallets based on Miniscript with timelocks.

Casa: multisig with six-month verification

Casa offers one of the most developed commercial implementations of crypto inheritance. The mechanism is included in the subscription fee: from $250 per year on the Standard plan and above.

The owner stores Bitcoin in a multisig vault and designates a recipient via the Casa app. The recipient creates a free account. By default, KYC verification is not required: in the basic scenario, identity confirmation is optional.

Until the transfer, the owner maintains full control over the funds. When the recipient initiates an inheritance request, Casa starts a six-month verification period. During this time, notifications are sent to the owner. If the owner does not cancel the request, access is granted to the recipient. A death certificate or court decision is not required — only an email suffices.

Casa also offers an Enhanced Verification mode for US clients. In this version, both owner and recipient provide documents, and a death certificate is required to initiate transfer — but the six-month waiting period is eliminated.

The main compromise is dependence on Casa’s infrastructure. If the company ceases operations, heirs will need to restore access themselves using the keys to the multisig vault. They can only transfer funds if they have enough keys to meet the signature threshold (e.g., 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5).

Liana: timelocks without intermediaries

Liana wallet by Wizardsardine employs a fundamentally different approach. Instead of trusting intermediaries, all inheritance logic is embedded in the Bitcoin script and executed by the network itself.

Liana operates on Miniscript — a standardized language for creating complex spending conditions. The owner sets two key sets: a primary (for daily use) and a backup (inheritance) key for the heir.

Source: Liana Wallet. The backup key “sleeps” and is activated only after a specified period of owner inactivity — from 1 (~10 minutes) to 65,535 blocks (~15 months). The maximum is limited by Bitcoin protocol because the timelock value is stored in a transaction’s fixed-size field — only 16 bits are allocated for it. As long as the owner makes transactions, the timer resets.

Other configurations include “expanding” multisig: for example, 2-of-2 initially, then 2-of-3 after six months. This flexibility allows building multi-layer recovery scenarios — from the most secure to the most accessible.

Source: Liana Wallet. Liana uses Taproot descriptors: the recovery path is hidden in the blockchain until activation. To an outside observer, transactions look like regular transfers — the inheritance conditions are not reflected in public data.

The wallet works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is compatible with hardware devices Ledger, Coldcard, BitBox, and Jade.

Limitation — UTXO management: each output has its own timer, and the owner must periodically send coins to themselves to “refresh” it, paying fees. Liana supports UTXO management — manual selection and tagging of coins for each transaction, simplifying this process.

Shamir’s Secret as an additional tool

Shamir’s Secret Sharing (SSS) algorithm splits a seed phrase into multiple parts. To recover it, a predetermined number of shares must be combined. Fewer shares reveal nothing.

The SLIP39 standard, developed by SatoshiLabs, encodes each share as 20 or 33 words from a dedicated vocabulary. Hardware support: Trezor Safe (default backup method since June 2024), Keystone 3 Pro. Software wallets Electrum and Sparrow also support the standard.

For inheritance, a 3-of-5 scheme can distribute shares among a home safe, spouse, parent, bank safe deposit box, and lawyer. An important difference from multisig is that SSS only protects the seed phrase backup. When shares are combined, the full seed phrase ends up on one device, creating a vulnerability window that multisig can avoid.

Why privacy is critical for heirs

When Bitcoin moves from a deceased’s wallet to a new address, analysts record this transfer. If the recipient then consolidates UTXOs or merges them with their own coins, address clustering links the entire wallet history to the deceased’s assets.

Once the heir uses a KYC exchange, the chain between on-chain activity and real identity is closed. Users seeking maximum anonymity for received funds should break the link to transaction history using Bitcoin mixers.

Mixer.Money splits bitcoins into random parts and sends them to investors’ wallets. Users receive coins from other platforms with completely different histories. In “Full Anonymity” mode, clients get funds from major exchanges, making the use of the mixer completely hidden.

Important rule: after mixing, do not combine anonymized UTXOs with coins withdrawn from exchanges after KYC. One joint transaction cancels all anonymization efforts.

Recommendations for inheritance planning

2025 set a record for the number of physical attacks on crypto holders: 72 wrench attacks recorded — a 75% increase over the previous year.

Against the backdrop of rising threats, privacy becomes not just a convenience but a security issue. If an attacker de-anonymizes the owner of a large sum, the risk of blackmail and violence sharply increases.

To build a reliable plan for secure transfer of assets, experts from Mixer.Money recommend regularly updating it — as wallets, balances, and security settings change.

It’s also crucial to educate technically unprepared heirs; otherwise, they might input seed phrases into compromised software or fall victim to scams. Finally, inheritance plans should be tested in practice.

The optimal Bitcoin inheritance strategy combines three elements: informing family members, secure storage, and on-chain privacy.

Do not disclose specific amounts in documents that could become public. Use Bitcoin mixers to break on-chain links.