The new Vault Inheritance service is available through Uphold Vault, the company’s assisted self-custody product. Users can name a beneficiary who may eventually receive their BTC, XRP or HBAR after Uphold verifies a claim following the owner’s death.
The feature costs $19.99 per month, with U.S. customers receiving a 30-day free trial. Existing Vault customers are scheduled to move to the new pricing after Dec. 31.
Beneficiaries Do Not Get Early Access
The system is designed to avoid giving beneficiaries control while the owner is alive.
A Vault customer selects a beneficiary from the dashboard. That person is notified and instructed to create an Uphold account, but cannot access or move the assets.
After the owner dies, the beneficiary submits a claim and supporting legal documents. Uphold’s compliance team verifies the paperwork before transferring control of the crypto to the beneficiary’s Uphold wallet. The account owner can also change the beneficiary while alive.
The model tackles a weakness inherent in self-custody: legal ownership alone does not provide access to private keys.
Our guide to XRP wallet security explains how losing private keys or recovery credentials can permanently block access to XRP.
Uphold Says Billions in Crypto May Already Be Stranded
Uphold cited estimates that almost 4 million BTC, worth roughly $331 billion, may be stranded in wallets because owners lost their private keys or died without leaving usable access credentials. The figure combines both causes, so it should not be interpreted as $331 billion specifically lost through inheritance failures.
The issue has become more important as crypto increasingly shifts from a trading asset into long-term household wealth.
Cold storage can reduce online security risks, but it also makes recovery planning essential. Coinpaper’s review of crypto hardware wallets highlights the trade-off between direct control and responsibility for backups and recovery.
