Trust

DEFINITION

A legal structure that holds assets for a beneficiary, managed by a trustee, outside of probate. For bitcoin, naming a trust as owner solves nothing on its own — the trustee still needs a real, working way to reach the keys.

A revocable living trust lets a grantor transfer ownership of assets to the trust while retaining control during their lifetime, with a named trustee taking over management on death or incapacity — without the court-supervised probate process a will typically requires. For traditional assets, that transfer is largely paperwork: retitle the deed, retitle the brokerage account, done.

Bitcoin doesn't have a title office. "Funding" the trust with bitcoin — the step that actually matters — means the trustee needs the same thing every other bitcoin custody plan needs: real, verified access to the keys, whether through a multisig arrangement, a documented and secured seed-phrase location, or a collaborative custody relationship built for exactly this. A trust document naming "the Trustee" as owner of bitcoin held somewhere unspecified is legally tidy and operationally useless.

Trusts and a power of attorney solve different windows: a POA covers incapacity while the grantor is alive, a trust (like a will) governs what happens to assets after death, and a well-built one can also name a successor trustee to step in during incapacity — covering both moments in a single document, which a simple will can't do.

IN A SENTENCE

"Naming a trust as owner skips probate on paper — funding it with bitcoin is the part that actually requires a key plan."

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