Casa Debuts Self-Custody Inheritance Product for BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC

DENVER, March 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Casa, the leading provider of self-custodial vaults, today announced a groundbreaking new feature that simplifies crypto inheritance and allows every investor to secure their estate across a range of popular assets, including BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC.

For years, investors holding their own keys have wondered what would happen to their crypto if they died. Unlike other types of property, ownership for assets like bitcoin is vested in whoever has the keys for a specific address. Often stored in hardware wallets, these keys are notoriously susceptible to loss, with an estimated $140 billion in bitcoin lost due, in part, to misplaced keys. In one notable example, a family struggled to recover nearly $200 million in assets when a crypto investor died unexpectedly. Executing an inheritance is already stressful and has historically been even more stressful when crypto assets are included in the estate.

This is the largest problem in self-custody today, and Casa is addressing it head-on.

Today, the company unveiled Casa Inheritance, which allows members on its latest membership plans to grant secure, conditional vault access to a "Recipient" of their choice. That person can be a loved one, trustee, or estate executor.

The inheritance product is uniquely enabled by Casa's core technology: multi-key vaults. With these vaults, a member must authenticate with multiple keys when sending assets, a security protocol known as multi-signature. When not transacting, members can spread their keys out for safekeeping and prevent single points of failure, such as hacks, burglaries, or accidents. The additional safeguards make Casa vaults a great fit for investors with a long time horizon.

Inheritance has long been a calling card for Casa, which was founded in 2016. Historically, the company's inheritance product was limited to U.S. investors with substantial bitcoin holdings.

Starting now, Casa Inheritance has no such limitation. Through the new offering, investors globally can take self-custody of their bitcoin and other digital assets and share inheritance access to their vaults for as low as $250 per year on the company's Standard plan. This plan comes with a 3-key vault.

The setup and transfer processes are simple. A member begins by granting conditional vault access and sharing locked, encrypted keys with a recipient, which is completed within the Casa app. If the member is incapacitated, the recipient can request a transfer, which prompts a six-month waiting period. During this time, Casa notifies the member of the pending transfer. When the period elapses, vault access is unlocked for the recipient.

Casa's inheritance expansion follows the rollout of several bitcoin ETFs, through which legacy financial institutions such as BlackRock and Fidelity offer investors the opportunity to purchase shares in underlying bitcoin in their brokerage account.

While the ETFs are useful to gain bitcoin exposure in retirement accounts or other regulated vehicles, they miss bitcoin's largest value proposition as truly ownable digital money - which can only be realized through self-custody.  Further, the new Bitcoin ETFs suffer from significant centralization risk, as the majority of them entrust their custody to a single custodian. This presents a potentially catastrophic risk to underlying assets in case of a custodian's hack, insolvency, or fraud — a far cry from the security guarantees of direct ownership. Casa has seen increased interest from investors who want to hold bitcoin without taking long-term custodial risk, particularly from high-net-worth individuals and family offices.

"A surprising second-order effect of the new ETFs is just how much they're motivating sophisticated investors to choose self-custody for their generational wealth," said Nick Neuman, Casa co-founder and CEO.  "While they are useful in some cases, bitcoin ETFs will never offer the security guarantees of direct ownership. If you view bitcoin as a long-term hedge against the financial system, holding it inside that system is a non-starter. Casa is the simplest, most secure way for investors to truly own their bitcoin, and our new Inheritance product ensures they can do so safely for generations to come."

Looking ahead, Casa is continuing to explore ways to make it safer and simpler for anyone to use private keys to secure their wealth amidst increasing global uncertainty.

ABOUT CASA

Casa helps people store bitcoin and other digital assets by empowering them to own, secure, and manage their private keys safely and easily. Founded in 2016, the company helps its members take self-custody of their assets with multi-key vaults for greater protection against single points of failure, such as hacks, theft, and accidents.

To learn more, please visit: https://casa.io/

SOURCE Casa