Self-Custody's Awkward Gap: Nobody Wrote a Will for Your Wallet 💀

Kresus has launched Kresus Inheritance, a new service built into its self-custody wallet that lets users designate a beneficiary to access their cryptocurrency holdings after a defined period of inactivity. The product, announced July 9th, 2026 from San Francisco, is priced at $99.99 per year and is designed to bring estate-planning infrastructure to digital assets without requiring users to share private keys or seed phrases. Private keys are never shared during the transfer process, and Kresus does not take custody of user assets; the wallet owner remains in control unless the inactivity window lapses and the succession process is triggered.

"Too much digital wealth has already been lost because there was no plan for what happens next," said Trevor Traina, Founder and CEO of Kresus. "Self-custody shouldn't mean your assets disappear if something happens to you. With Kresus Inheritance, we're giving users a secure and affordable way to protect their legacy and ensure the wealth they've built can be passed on to the next generation." A user holding $50,000 in bitcoin can now designate a spouse or adult child as beneficiary, with the beneficiary receiving zero access until a verified succession event occurs.

The launch comes against a backdrop of growing crypto adoption and persistent worry about posthumous asset recovery. An estimated 55 million U.S. adults, or 21% of the population, now own cryptocurrency, according to a Harris Poll study, while a Cremation Institute study found that 89% of crypto investors worry about what happens to their assets after death. Kresus positioned Inheritance as a direct response to that gap.

Inheritance extends Kresus's existing wallet and infrastructure business, which already serves millions of self-custodial wallet users through the Kresus Wallet, mini-app experiences, and enterprise solutions for digital wallets, tokenized assets, and on-chain financial workflows. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, said the feature reflects a broader push to expand the wallet's role into a complete platform for wealth management anchored by tools such as Inheritance that bring legacy planning directly into the self-custody experience.