You will produce a plan for where each crypto holding sits, how it is backed up and how your family can claim it.
Imagine Darren is hit by a bus next year. His sister, who is his executor, knows he "had some bitcoin". She can see the exchange app on his locked phone, and in a drawer there is a small device she does not recognise next to an unlabelled sealed envelope. Do they belong together? What is in them? Nobody she knows can say. A bank account would turn up through statements and be closed through a branch, but self-custodied crypto has no branch to visit. The exercise below is how you spare your own family that afternoon.
You will produce two documents. The first is a one-page custody plan for you. The second is a short sealed instruction for your executor, kept separately. Allow about 30 minutes, and keep beside you the list of holdings you made for lesson 4.1, A wallet holds keys, not coins.
Start from your list of holdings and who controls the keys. For each one, decide whether it stays on a licensed exchange or moves to self-custody, and write one line explaining why.
Lesson 4.1 set out the trade-off. Exchange custody keeps the protections in lesson 3.2, The protections MAS requires for retail customers, and gives your family a company to contact, but leaves you exposed to the exchange. Self-custody removes that exposure but makes you responsible for every mistake in lesson 4.3, Mistakes that self-custody does not forgive.
Darren's plan, as an example, kept S$300 of bitcoin on his licensed exchange for occasional use, and moved the rest, about S$1,700 worth at the time, to a hardware wallet. His reason: he does not trade, and he did not want his long-term holding to depend on one company.
Your plan says where things are. It must never contain the seed phrase itself, any private key, or any password. If the plan were found, it should tell the finder that something exists without giving them access to it.
For each self-custodied holding, record which wallet it sits in, where the device is kept, and where each copy of the seed phrase is stored, following the four rules from lesson 4.2, Your seed phrase is the whole account. Describe locations plainly enough for you, such as "copy 1: home safe" and "copy 2: with my sister", but say nothing about what the words are. If you use an extra passphrase, record where that is kept too, and make sure it is not kept with the phrase.
For holdings on an exchange, record the exchange, the legal entity from your check in lesson 3.4, Run a licence and terms check on one exchange, and the email address the account uses. Passwords stay out of it.
Step 3 is short: copy in the five-step routine you wrote for lesson 4.3. Having it on the same page means you see it whenever you review your holdings, and it reminds you that every transfer goes through the same checks.
Your executor is the person who will deal with your estate. Lesson 8.1 of The Singapore personal finance system, What a will covers, and what it does not, explains the role. For crypto, they face one problem nobody else in your estate creates: there may be no company to contact, and no record anywhere that the assets exist.
So the instruction has to do three things. It has to say that crypto exists and roughly what it is. It has to say where each holding is and how to reach it, in steps a non-technical person could follow. And for self-custodied crypto, it has to say how to find the seed phrase, while leaving out the phrase itself.
Darren's instruction runs to half a page. It says he holds bitcoin in two places, names the exchange and the email on the account, and explains that the exchange will need a death certificate and proof of the executor's authority. It then says that the rest sits on a hardware wallet in his desk, that the recovery words are in two places, and where those are. Finally it suggests his sister ask a trusted, technically confident friend he names to help restore the wallet, and warns her never to give the words to anyone who contacts her offering help.
Keep the custody plan with your own records. Seal the executor instruction in an envelope, label it clearly, and store it where your executor will look, perhaps with your will or your other estate papers. Then tell one trusted person that it exists and where it is. An instruction nobody knows about is no better than none.
A will can cover digital assets, and you can name what should happen to your crypto in it. How to word that, and whether your will needs updating, is a question for a lawyer. If you do not have a will yet, this is a good reason to make one, and to mention your crypto when you do.
The custody plan fits on one page, with a line per holding giving location, key control, reason, backup locations and the date, and your pre-send routine underneath. The executor instruction is separate and sealed, and at least one person knows where it is. Review both whenever you change where a holding sits, and at least once a year.
Take your list of holdings from lesson 4.1 and start with Step 1.
Write a one-page custody plan and a separate sealed instruction for your executor, and tell one trusted person where to find it.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).