Kresus, the self-custody wallet company, has unveiled Kresus Inheritance, a subscription service that allows users to create a succession plan for their cryptocurrency holdings without sharing private keys or relying on complex recovery methods. Priced at $99.99 per year, the service is built directly into the Kresus wallet and addresses one of self-custody’s most persistent pain points: what happens to digital assets when the owner dies or becomes permanently inactive.
Existing workarounds—such as writing down seed phrases or sharing private keys with trusted parties—introduce significant vulnerabilities. Physical copies can be discovered, and shared keys can be misused. Traditional estate planning is often costly and poorly suited to digital assets. Kresus Inheritance circumvents these risks by letting users designate a beneficiary who can access the portfolio only after a predefined inactivity period has elapsed. Throughout that time, the wallet owner retains full control, and Kresus never takes custody of the assets. Private keys are never shared as part of the succession process.
The launch is backed by striking market data. A Harris Poll study found that 55 million U.S. adults—21% of the population—now own cryptocurrency. Yet according to research from the Cremation Institute, 89% of crypto investors worry about what will happen to their digital assets after death. Trevorem Traina, Founder and CEO of Kresus, emphasized the urgency: “Too much digital wealth has already been lost because there was no plan for what happens next. Self-custody shouldn’t mean your assets disappear if something happens to you.”
The service extends Kresus’s existing wallet and infrastructure offerings, which include seedless recovery, MPC-based security, biometric authentication, and optional asset insurance. Inheritance slots in as the succession layer, reflecting a broader industry trend toward integrating wealth-management tools into self-custody platforms. As early crypto adopters age, native inheritance features are expected to shift from niche to baseline expectation, and Kresus aims to be at the forefront of that shift.
