Digital Assets & Inheritance: What Heirs Actually Get (2026)
The average household now holds thousands of dollars of digital assets — cryptocurrency, online bank and brokerage accounts, a domain portfolio, a small online business, or simply years of photos in a cloud account. Most wills say nothing about them, and that silence creates the two classic failure modes: assets that die with you (accounts with no access plan) and assets that surprise the executor with tax consequences. This guide covers what heirs actually get, what the estate tax sees, and the executor’s checklist.
What passes to heirs vs what dies with you
Digital assets fall into three buckets. Financial: crypto, brokerage, bank, and retirement accounts — these pass by beneficiary designation or via the estate like any other property, and their value is part of the gross estate. Personal: cloud files, social media, email — these follow the platform’s terms of service (most platforms have a memorialization or data-download process for executors) and usually have little estate-tax value. Business: domains, e-commerce stores, content sites, and IP — often the most valuable and the most commonly missed in an inventory.
Crypto and step-up in basis
Inherited crypto receives a step-up in basis to fair market value at the date of death, exactly like stock — heirs owe capital-gains tax only on appreciation after death. This makes holding rather than gifting appreciated crypto the tax-efficient choice for estates below the exemption. Gifting crypto during life transfers your original cost basis to the recipient, who inherits your gains. See the full rules in What Kind of Assets Get a Step-Up in Basis? and run the numbers on our Step-Up Calculator.
Estate tax treatment
Every digital asset with market value counts toward the gross estate: crypto at its date-of-death value, a business at appraised value, even a valuable domain or NFT. For estates near the threshold, this is where undercounting happens — the executor must value and, if over the $15M federal exemption (2026, OBBBA) or a state threshold, report them. State estate tax applies first in states like Oregon ($1M) and Massachusetts ($2M). Check your state with the state calculator.
The executor’s digital checklist
Executors should: (1) locate the password vault or digital-inventory document (ask the family; check the will for a digital-asset clause), (2) download platform data via each service’s deceased-user process, (3) value crypto/business/domains at the date of death and keep records, (4) transfer or close accounts with financial value, and (5) check whether state probate rules require a digital-asset inventory filing. The Estate Planning Checklist includes a digital-assets section to build this before it is needed.