When will the crypto world stop pretending that digital assets vanish into the ether upon their owners’ death, leaving billions stranded and families bereft? Binance founder CZ’s blunt insistence on a mandatory “will function” across all crypto platforms exposes a glaring and persistent systemic failure: the industry’s stubborn refusal to confront the inevitable reality of asset inheritance. His call isn’t a mere suggestion; it’s a demand rooted in the cold arithmetic of over $1 billion in crypto lost annually due to absent estate planning—a staggering figure that should shame every exchange and custodian still ignoring this existential vulnerability. Binance’s feature supports major assets like BTC, ETH, and BNB, with plans to expand its digital asset support.
The “will function” CZ advocates is deceptively simple: allow users to designate beneficiaries who inherit their digital fortunes upon death, ideally integrated within the platform to prevent orphaned accounts. Yet, the crypto ecosystem’s decentralized ethos and opaque security protocols have long hindered this commonsense solution, leaving heirs in legal limbo while assets rot in inaccessible wallets. Binance’s emergency contact feature, a tentative step toward inheritance formalization, permits a trusted designee to claim assets posthumously with proper documentation—but even this pragmatic innovation barely scratches the surface of the inheritance challenge. According to community builder cryptobraveHQ, more than 1 billion in crypto is transferred to exchanges annually due to accidental deaths, highlighting the magnitude of the issue.
Critics raise valid concerns about fraud prevention, death verification, and safeguarding minors’ access, but these are surmountable hurdles, not excuses for inertia. CZ’s urging to regulators to enable controlled accounts for minors receiving crypto payments further underscores the need for a comprehensive legal framework, not piecemeal afterthoughts. The crypto industry’s cavalier attitude toward legacy planning reeks of negligence, an abdication of responsibility that risks consigning vast wealth to oblivion, while families grapple with confusion and loss. If the sector’s custodians claim maturity and innovation, they must prove it by securing users’ legacies—not by pretending death’s shadow is somehow irrelevant in the digital age.
