What are digital assets?
Digital assets are things of value held in digital form: cryptocurrency, domain names, online business accounts, monetised channels, loyalty points and stored media. Some are genuine property forming part of the estate; others are only a personal licence that ends at death.
The distinction matters. A domain name or a crypto holding is an asset with value that passes to the estate. A music or film library is usually a licence to the person, which simply ends — despite what the size of the collection suggests.
Cryptocurrency is the sharpest case. Without the private keys or seed phrase, the holding is unrecoverable by anyone, and no court order can retrieve it. It is also within the scope of inheritance tax, which produces the worst outcome available: a taxable asset the executor can neither find nor sell.
Executors can only deal with what they know exists. Recording the existence, location and rough value of digital holdings — separately from the credentials — is what makes them administrable.