What Happens to Your Bitcoin When You Die, and What to Prepare

Picture an ordinary week. On Monday you drive to work. On Tuesday you don’t come home. Your phone is locked, your laptop has a password, and in a drawer there’s a piece of paper with twenty-four words nobody understands. Your wife or brother finds it a month later while sorting through your things. It goes into a folder with the washing machine manuals.

That’s how most stories of lost crypto go. No hack, no exchange failure, no scammer. Nobody just knew.

This guide explains what happens to bitcoin when its owner dies and what you can prepare now. The full picture of crypto inheritance, with law and tax, is in the pillar crypto inheritance. The legal parts below describe Polish law. Other EU countries have their own rules, so check locally.

Crypto goes into the estate, but nobody will hand it over

The law is simpler here than it looks. Bitcoin is property. It’s inherited like a car or money in a bank account: by will or by statute. Under Polish law the heir acquires the estate when the deceased dies (Article 925 of the Polish Civil Code). Then they confirm their rights with a court decision or a notarial certificate of succession (akt poświadczenia dziedziczenia, Article 1025 of the Civil Code).

And that’s where it ends. A bank pays out on such a document. The bitcoin network has no counter. There’s nobody to show a court order to. The funds are where they were, and they’ll stay there until someone types the right words into the right device.

That’s why access instructions for your family aren’t an add-on to a will. They’re the one thing that makes the will useful.

What happens after the owner dies, step by step

This is the path when bitcoin sits in a wallet of your own, with no preparation:

1. The owner dies. The funds stay at their address on the network. Nobody blocks them and nobody knows they’re there.
2. The family starts the formalities: the death certificate, the estate case. Nobody mentions crypto, because nobody knows about it.
3. The estate case ends with a document. The heirs have paper saying they inherit from the deceased.
4. Months or years later, someone comes across the device or the piece of paper. They don’t know what it is, so they put it aside or throw it away.
5. If nobody restores access, the bitcoin sits at the address forever.

At no step does the network ask for documents. All that counts is whether someone can sign a transaction with the private key.

It’s different when the crypto is on an exchange. An exchange has terms and a support team, and the family can report the customer’s death with documents, as long as they know the account exists. We describe that in the guide exchange account after death.

Where the crypto is	What happens after death	What’s most often missing
Exchange	The exchange decides what to release once it has the succession documents	Knowing the account exists
Hardware wallet	The funds wait at the address, the device sits in a drawer	The seed and the knowledge of how to use it
Wallet app on a phone	Access depends on the phone and its lock	The phone’s code and a backup of the seed
2-of-3 wallet	The family needs two of the three keys	Knowing where the keys are and how to combine them

Does bitcoin “expire” after years?

No. As long as the network runs, the funds sit at their address and wait for a signature. There’s no limitation period, no account that lapses after years of inactivity, no bank that closes the account. The same property causes the problem: nobody will hand the funds to a person without the key, even if they have a right to the estate.

So the funds become unreachable in one case: when nobody is left who knows the key and no copy exists from which it can be restored. The risk lies in storage and in what the family knows, not in the network. That’s why preparing makes sense, and isn’t just caution “in case”.

What the family should do after finding a device or a piece of paper

If your relatives find the device or the list of words, and you’ve left instructions, they have a simple plan. If there are no instructions, there are four rules:

1. Don’t throw away anything that looks like a small gadget with a screen, a sheet with a list of words, or a metal plate.
2. Don’t type the words into any website and don’t send them to anyone.
3. Don’t trust people who contact you offering help “recovering” the funds.
4. Photograph the place where something was found before anything gets moved, and take it calmly. The funds aren’t going anywhere.

We describe the procedure for an heir in the guide inherited crypto, what next.

Three things your family doesn’t know

When we ask people at a check-up who at home knows about their crypto, the most common answer is “my wife knows I have something”. That’s not enough. To recover the funds, your family needs to know three things.

That it exists, and where. On an exchange, on a hardware wallet, on a phone. Not the amount, the place. Without this, nobody will even look.

How to get to it. Which device, which software, in what order. For someone who has never held a hardware wallet, “restore the wallet from the seed in Sparrow” is a sentence in a foreign language.

Where the keys are and what not to do with them. Which words, in which place, in what order. And a list of things that are forbidden: don’t type the words into any website, don’t send them to anyone who offers to “help”, don’t photograph them.

Why handing someone the seed isn’t enough

The first instinct is to write the words down and give a copy to a trusted person. That works until that person is robbed, changes their mind or is talked round by someone clever. Whoever has the seed has everything. No questions, no waiting for an inheritance.

It follows from the design. The recovery phrase described in the BIP-39 standard is the key written out in words. Nothing in it tells the owner apart from someone who copied the words. A copy equals the original. We cover storage in the guide seed phrase: how to store it.

A better setup is a 2-of-3 wallet. Three keys in three places: your home, a safe-deposit box, a trusted person. Any two are needed to send funds. A trusted person with one key can’t send anything. A thief with one key can’t send anything. If one key is lost, the other two are enough to move the funds to a new wallet. And after your death, your family takes their key, collects the second from the box and has access. The design is explained in the glossary entry 2-of-3 wallet, and who it suits and how much work it needs is covered in the guide 2-of-3 multisig wallet: who is it for.

Instructions that can be read

Good access instructions for your family fit on a few pages and don’t contain a single word you’d have to look up in a glossary. They’re on paper, in two places. They say what to do step by step, from opening the envelope to making the transfer, and whom to call when something doesn’t add up.

They contain no amounts. They contain no seed. Whoever finds them learns that the crypto exists and how to recover it, but can’t do anything with that without the keys.

One thing matters here: the instructions need testing. A chosen person sits down with them at a test wallet and goes through the steps. If they get lost, you fix the text, not the person. What exactly to put in such instructions, and what to leave out, is in the guide what access instructions for your family contain.

Does a will settle it?

Partly. A will decides who inherits. It can even name a specific heir for the crypto. But it can’t replace access to the wallet, and it shouldn’t contain it. After your death a notary, a court, officials and the whole family read the will. We never write seeds or passwords in it.

The Polish Civil Code also provides a vindication legacy (zapis windykacyjny). The named person then acquires the object of the legacy when the estate opens, and the will has to be a notarial deed (Article 981¹ of the Civil Code). Whether that works for crypto and how to describe it is a question for a notary, because the law doesn’t mention crypto directly. We cover this more fully in the guide crypto in your will.

What you can do this weekend

1. Tell one person that you have crypto and where. No amount.
2. Check whether your seed would survive a fire. Paper won’t. A steel plate costs about as much as a dinner.
3. Write one page saying what your family should do if you’re gone. If you have doubts after reading it yourself, that’s a sign you need more than one page.
4. Do a recovery test. An empty hardware wallet, your words, the same address at the end. Only then do you know the backup works.

If you’d rather do it with someone, that’s what the check-up is for: an hour’s conversation online, after which you know what’s in order and what needs fixing. We don’t see your keys for a second. If you want your family to get ready, tested instructions, we describe that on the page For your family.

The parts about inheritance law are not legal advice. For your own case, ask a notary or lawyer.

Accurate as of 19 October 2026.