New legislation now officially recognises digital assets as property. This addresses the previous lack of clarity about the status of digital assets, including cryptocurrency. This means you can now treat them like other types of asset in your Will.
Posts tagged “Digital assets”
Executors recently discovered lost assets of £629,000, held in multiple bank accounts following the sale of a family farm.
A daughter was in care and had a life interest in her mother’s estate. A law firm was acting as her deputy, looking after her interests. Sadly, she died before her mother. When her mother also died, there were two estates to deal with. There was very little information available about these separate but related estates.
Tokenisation creates a digital representation of a real thing. It’s used to protect sensitive data or efficiently process large amounts of data. You can also transfer ownership of your real-world assets into tokens using distributed ledger technology (DLT) known as blockchain.
The Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill has just been introduced to the House of Lords. The Bill’s purpose is to clarify the legal status of digital assets as personal property.
Cryptocurrency is digital money. It’s protected by technology called blockchain which safely stores information about your transactions.
Many people are interested in cryptocurrency because banks and governments don’t control it.
You can use cryptocurrency to buy some things online but it’s also a new way to invest and save for the future. Some think the value of cryptocurrencies will go up as more people use them.
There are almost 9,000 active cryptocurrencies. You’ve probably heard of ones like Bitcoin and Ethereum. They are popular because governments and banks don’t control them.
However, holding and managing cryptocurrency investments isn’t straightforward.
Moving to online banking and turning off paper statements is convenient and popular. However, it’s easy to forget that this means there’s very little to tell your loved ones where your assets are when you die.
If they don’t have access to your digital devices and account details they might never find what you have left behind.
We are all being urged to plan what will happen to our ‘digital memories’ by the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). These might include irreplaceable photos, videos, social media profiles and email accounts. If you don’t make arrangements before your death these could all be lost.
The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) is supporting a campaign to give bereaved families access to their loved ones’ digital assets.
It’s a new question for our technological age – what happens to your digital assets when you die?
People often underestimate what’s in their estate when they start to think about their Will. It’s easy to forget about things that are stored in the cloud or on a laptop or smartphone, social media accounts, online bank accounts and cryptocurrencies.
