Imagine the left-luggage office at an old railway station.
You hand over a suitcase. A clerk writes a number on a paper ticket, tears it in half, and gives you one half. The suitcase goes on a shelf behind the counter, and it stays there as long as you like. You are not carrying it. Somebody else is holding it for you, and the ticket is your claim on it.
Now the ticket holder dies.
The suitcase has not moved. It is still on the shelf, and unlike a lost key, there is a very important difference here: somebody knows it is there. There is a counter, and a clerk, and a rulebook about who is allowed to collect an unclaimed bag. The family cannot just walk in and take it. But they can ask, and there is somebody who has to answer.
That is custodial crypto. When your coins sit on Coinbase or Binance or Kraken, the exchange holds the keys and you hold a claim. It is the opposite of the lost-key problem, and it comes with an entirely different set of frustrations.
This post is what the rulebook actually says at the three biggest counters, what each one demands, where claims get stuck, and why none of it is a substitute for a plan. The opposite situation, where there is no counter and no clerk at all, is covered in what happens to crypto when someone dies without sharing keys.
Why an Exchange Claim Is Nothing Like Losing a Key
If someone dies holding their own private keys and never shares them, that money is gone. No process exists. No amount of paperwork helps, because there is nobody to hand the paperwork to.
An exchange account is a debt owed to you by a company. Companies have compliance teams, legal obligations, and regulators. That means an estate has a real path, and it also means the exchange has every incentive to be slow and careful, because paying the wrong person is a much worse outcome for them than making the right person wait.
So the failure mode flips completely. With self-custody you lose everything instantly and permanently. With an exchange you lose almost nothing and it takes months.
Both of those are real costs. They are just paid in different currencies.
Coinbase
Coinbase runs the most documented process of the three, through what it calls Executor Services.
The estate representative needs a certified copy of the death certificate, and certified copies of the probate documents that prove authority. That means letters testamentary, letters of administration, or for smaller estates an affidavit for collection or small estate affidavit. On top of that Coinbase asks for current government-issued photo identification for whoever is named in those probate documents, and a signed letter from that person directing Coinbase where to transfer the assets.
Two details catch people out. Certified means certified, so photocopies and funeral-home keepsake certificates are refused. And to reach the Executor Services form in the first place you generally need to sign in to your own Coinbase account, which is a strange requirement for a grieving relative who has never used the platform.
Typical timeline from first contact to completed transfer runs about four to eight weeks when the documents are right, and longer whenever something has to be corrected and resubmitted.
Binance
Binance handles this through an in-product flow it calls Inheritance Appeal, reached by logging in, opening Customer Support, choosing View All under Self Service, and then Legacy Inheritance under Account. As with Coinbase, the claimant needs their own account to get there.
Binance.US publishes the clearest document list, and it includes something the others do not ask for. Alongside the digital copy of the death certificate, the government ID of the claimant, and the will or probate documents, Binance.US requires a selfie video in which the claimant states their preferred method of transfer for the deceased user's assets.
That video requirement is worth sitting with for a second. It exists because a document can be forged and a live face is harder to fake, which tells you exactly how much fraud these teams are defending against. It also tells you that a person who is uncomfortable on camera, or elderly, or in a country with poor connectivity, has just been handed an extra obstacle at the worst possible time.
Everything is then reviewed by a dedicated team, and assets are transferred to the rightful beneficiary or trustee once the application is confirmed. Binance does not publish a firm timeline, which in practice means plan for the same weeks-to-months range as everyone else.
Kraken
Kraken states plainly that it does not currently offer a way to add a beneficiary to an account. There is no "in the event of my death, pay this person" setting to switch on. There is only the after-the-fact claim process.
For that claim Kraken asks for a complete colour image of the official death certificate, and it specifically refuses certificates issued by funeral homes. It also requires legal documentation confirming your appointment as the legal representative of the estate, meaning probate or letters of administration.
Then comes the detail that quietly derails claims. Kraken's security rules do not allow a withdrawal to a bank account whose holder's name differs from the name on the Kraken account. So an executor who has cleared every legal hurdle can still be blocked at the final step, because the only bank account available is the estate's or their own, and neither carries the deceased's name. That has to be worked through with their team rather than solved by the estate alone.
Read the rules for the last step before you start the first one.
What All Three Have in Common, and Where Claims Stall
Strip away the branding and the three processes are the same shape. Prove the death with a certified official document. Prove your authority with a court-issued paper. Prove you are you. Then wait.
Claims stall in three places, over and over.
Nobody knew the account existed. This is the big one, and no exchange process can fix it. There is no paper statement in the post for a crypto account. If the family does not know to file a claim, the coins sit on the shelf indefinitely. Exchanges do not go looking for the heirs of a quiet account.
The probate paper does not exist yet. Every one of these processes depends on a court document that can take months to obtain, and in some jurisdictions much longer. The exchange timeline starts after that clock, not during it.
Locked accounts and dead phone numbers. Two-factor authentication tied to a recycled mobile number, or a recovery email nobody can open, turns an already slow process into a support ticket about identity rather than inheritance.
Notice that only one of those three is the exchange's fault.
Why This Is Still Not a Plan
Here is the uncomfortable conclusion. Custody on a major exchange gives your family a door to knock on, which is genuinely better than no door. It does not tell them the building exists.
And it costs you something every day you use it. You are trusting a company to stay solvent, stay honest, and stay in business. That is the exact risk self-custody was invented to remove, and holding coins on an exchange purely as an inheritance strategy means accepting that risk for years to buy a claims process you could have replicated better.
The better shape is to separate the two problems. Hold your assets however suits you, on an exchange or in your own custody or split across both. Then keep the map to all of it somewhere that outlives you. If you are still choosing, we compared the five real ways to pass bitcoin to your heirs.
That map is what SecureVault is for. It records which exchanges you use, which wallets exist, where the hardware lives, and what your executor needs to do first, encrypted on your device before upload so BlockWill holds a sealed box rather than a readable list of your holdings. The client-side encryption post explains why that distinction is not marketing.
The ability to open that vault is split with Shamir's Secret Sharing, so no single party including BlockWill holds enough to open it alone, and VaultRelay decides when release is justified using documentary proof and executor attestation rather than silence alone.
An exchange will answer your family's questions. Something has to tell them which questions to ask.
Frequently Asked Questions
What documents do I need to claim a deceased person's crypto exchange account?
In almost all cases: a certified copy of the death certificate, court documents proving you are the legal representative such as letters testamentary or letters of administration, and your own government photo identification. Binance.US additionally requires a selfie video stating your preferred transfer method.
How long does a crypto exchange death claim take?
Coinbase commonly completes transfers in four to eight weeks once complete documents are submitted. Binance and Kraken do not publish firm timelines. The realistic planning number is weeks to months, and that clock only starts after probate documents exist, which can itself take months.
Can I add a beneficiary to my Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken account?
Kraken states directly that it does not offer beneficiary designation. None of the three offers a true payable-on-death setting comparable to a bank. Every route runs through a claim after the fact, with court paperwork.
Will the exchange freeze the account when they learn about the death?
Commonly yes. Reporting a death typically locks the account against trading and withdrawal until the claim is resolved, which is protective but means the estate has no control over price movements while it waits.
Why does Kraken refuse a withdrawal to my bank account?
Kraken's security rules block withdrawals to a bank account whose holder name does not match the account holder's name. Executors hit this at the final step and have to resolve it with Kraken's team, so raise it early rather than at the end.
Do I need my own exchange account to file a claim?
For Coinbase and Binance, generally yes, because the claim forms sit inside the logged-in support area. Expect to create an account and complete identity verification before you can even begin.
What if the deceased used an exchange nobody in the family knew about?
Then the process never starts. Exchanges do not proactively contact heirs. This is the single most common way custodial crypto is lost, and it is solved by a maintained inventory rather than by anything the exchange does.
Is it safer to keep crypto on an exchange so my family can claim it?
It makes recovery more likely and ownership less certain. You take on the risk of the company failing or freezing your funds for the entire time you are alive, to buy a claims process that still takes months. Recording what you own and where solves the same problem without the trade.
The Bottom Line
The three biggest exchanges all have a real process, and all three will hand your money to your family eventually. Coinbase is the most documented, Binance is the most in-product, and Kraken is the most explicit that it will not help you plan ahead.
None of them is fast. All of them wait on a court. Two of them make your grieving relative open an account before they can even ask the question.
But the paperwork is not what loses the money. The silence is. Every one of these processes assumes somebody already knows the account is there, and that assumption fails more often than any form does.
Write down where your suitcase is.
The clerk is not going to come looking for your family.
# FAQ items
- What documents do I need to claim a deceased person's crypto exchange account? A certified death certificate, court documents proving you are the legal representative (letters testamentary or administration), and your own government photo ID. Binance.US also requires a selfie video stating your preferred transfer method.
- How long does a crypto exchange death claim take? Coinbase commonly runs four to eight weeks once complete documents are in. Plan for weeks to months, starting only after probate documents exist.
- Can I add a beneficiary to my Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken account? Kraken states it does not offer beneficiary designation, and none of the three offers a true payable-on-death setting. Every route is a claim after the fact.
- Will the exchange freeze the account when they learn about the death? Commonly yes, locking trading and withdrawals until the claim resolves.
- Why does Kraken refuse a withdrawal to my bank account? Kraken blocks withdrawals to a bank account whose holder name does not match the account holder's. Executors hit this at the final step, so raise it early.
- Do I need my own exchange account to file a claim? For Coinbase and Binance, generally yes, because the forms sit inside the logged-in support area.
- What if the deceased used an exchange nobody knew about? The process never starts. Exchanges do not contact heirs proactively. Only a maintained inventory solves this.
- Is it safer to keep crypto on an exchange so my family can claim it? It makes recovery likelier and ownership less certain, and you carry company risk the whole time you are alive.
