Digital Assets in Trust: A Professional Trustee Reference Guide to Cryptocurrency Custody, Fiduciary Duties, Cross-Border Compliance and Digital-Asset Governance is a practical fiduciary reference work for professional trustees, private trust companies, family offices, protectors, fiduciary service providers, trust lawyers, tax advisers, compliance officers and wealth-planning professionals who are required to administer digital assets within trust structures.
The book addresses the central question facing modern trustees: not simply whether a trust can hold cryptocurrency, but how digital assets can be held, controlled, valued, reported, distributed and protected in a manner consistent with fiduciary duty. It explains why digital assets must not be treated as ordinary portfolio assets: a private key is not a bank password, an exchange balance is not necessarily segregated trust property, a stablecoin is not simply cash, and trust authority does not automatically confer regulatory permission.
Written as a professional operating guide rather than a technical blockchain manual, the manuscript examines cryptocurrency custody, key-control governance, trustee powers, prudent administration, licensing risk, AML/CFT and sanctions controls, source-of-wealth procedures, tax reporting, CRS/FATCA/CARF/DAC8 transparency, valuation, staking, lending, DeFi, stablecoins, tokenised securities, insolvency, tracing, privacy, beneficiary distributions and cross-border data issues.
The book also provides comparative jurisdictional guidance covering major onshore and offshore trust and digital-asset centres, including the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, United Arab Emirates, Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Switzerland, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Panama. Its practical tools include trustee intake protocols, custody due-diligence tables, risk matrices, decision trees, model trust clauses, board resolutions, incident-response templates, beneficiary disclosure language and implementation roadmaps.
The central proposition is clear:
digital assets can be administered in trust, but only if custody, control, regulation, tax, reporting, privacy and insolvency are treated as fiduciary issues from the beginning.