Digital Asset Unclaimed Property

The obligation is already in force.

We help platforms holding digital assets on behalf of US customers identify, quantify and satisfy state escheatment obligations — before the filing deadline, not after an examination.

Five US states brought digital assets within their unclaimed property statutes between October 2025 and April 2026

90 days To enrol after a Delaware voluntary disclosure invitation. Holders who do not are referred for a state-initiated examination

$270m Already remitted to a single state treasury by one exchange in 2024, across accounts in 139 countries

What changed

Every US state requires a business holding property belonging to someone else to report it, and ultimately surrender it, once the owner has been out of contact for a defined period. As of 2026, digital assets are within scope.

The obligation is long-established for uncashed cheques, unapplied customer credits and dormant deposit balances. What is new is its extension to virtual currency — and the manner of that extension, which is materially more demanding than anything that came before it.

California requires holders to deliver the asset itself: the exact type, the exact amount and the private keys, unliquidated, to a state-designated custodian within thirty days of filing. No treasury, compliance or accounting system currently in production at a digital asset platform was designed to do that.

Jurisdiction	Status	Principal requirement
California	Signed 14 Oct 2025 In force 1 Jan 2026	Three-year dormancy. Owner notice 6–12 months before reportability in prescribed language. Asset transferred unliquidated — type, amount and private keys — to the Controller's custodian within 30 days of report.
Utah	Signed 18 Mar 2026	Native-form delivery; administrator may direct liquidation.
Alabama	Signed 26 Mar 2026	Native-form remittance; the administrator may direct liquidation. Due-diligence letters must warn owners that the property may be liquidated. The holder is released from liability for appreciation or depreciation after liquidation.
Virginia	Signed 13 Apr 2026	First Virginia digital asset provision. Native form unless directed otherwise.
Maine	Signed 13 Apr 2026 In force 29 Jul 2026	Five-year dormancy running from the owner's last indication of interest. The Treasurer's 2026 holder manual still lists property type VC02 at three years and gives no transition guidance. Statute and manual conflict.

Two further digital asset unclaimed property bills were pending as at May 2026 — California AB 2335 and Louisiana HB 1256. Delaware, which has covered virtual currency since 2021, is treated separately below: its enforcement mechanism differs in kind from the others.

Positions above reviewed 9 August 2026 and subject to change.

The enforcement clock

Delaware does not wait for a holder to come forward. It writes to the chief financial officer, by certified mail, and starts a ninety-day clock.

Delaware has covered virtual currency since 1 August 2021 under a five-year dormancy running from the owner's last indication of interest. Unlike the states above, it requires the holder to liquidate the virtual currency within the ninety days before filing and remit the proceeds — the opposite of the in-kind delivery California now mandates. A holder with customers in both states faces two incompatible processes for the same asset.

Enforcement runs on a published calendar. The Secretary of State issues voluntary disclosure invitations twice a year — 10 April and 14 August in 2026 — sent to the CFO by certified mail. The recipient has ninety days to enrol. A holder who does not is referred to the Department of Finance for a state-initiated examination, conducted in practice by one of Delaware's third-party audit firms. Notices of examination were scheduled for the weeks of 13 July and 16 November 2026.

An invitation is not an accusation. It is a ninety-day option that expires, and the alternative is an examination you did not choose.

The window is the point. A holder who enrols has scope to establish its own position and methodology. A holder who is examined is working to someone else's.

Where the exposure sits

Our work is relevant to any organisation holding digital assets on behalf of identifiable customers with US connections. The common thread is not size; it is that the obligation is new, internal ownership of it is unresolved, and the question has not yet been put to the ledger.

Exchanges and trading platforms. Large retail account bases and long operating histories. The dormant population grows with every delisting, market exit or licence change.
Custodians and trust companies. Fewer accounts, materially larger balances, and an examiner for whom unclaimed property is routine scope.
Stablecoin issuers and payment platforms. A mature fiat escheat function that was never extended to the digital asset sub-ledger.
Neobanks and fintechs with digital asset products. An existing programme that predates the digital asset entity and therefore almost certainly does not cover it.
Platforms that have wound down a product or market. The highest-exposure pattern. Forced account closure creates a reportable population immediately, and dormancy runs from the closure date.

Digital asset escheatment is occasionally discussed as a future problem. It is not.

This has already happened at scale. During 2024 a major exchange closed roughly a quarter of a million customer accounts across 139 countries, liquidated the holdings, and remitted approximately $270m in proceeds to Wyoming — enough to roughly triple that state's unclaimed property fund overnight. Wyoming has since returned a record $42m to about 16,000 claimants, more than eighty per cent of them former customers of that platform, and its administrator does not expect half of the $270m ever to be claimed. The point is not that escheatment is survivable. It is that owner outreach conducted before the deadline is worth more than anything that can be done after it.

How we work

Work is structured in five phases. Each stands alone and produces something usable whether or not the engagement continues. We do not ask for a multi-phase commitment; most clients begin, and many conclude, at the first.

Applicability memorandum

Ten working days · fixed fee · no customer data

Which states reach your business, under which provision, from which date, and what your filing calendar looks like over the next twelve months. Built entirely from a written questionnaire covering corporate structure, customer geography and account history — we do not need your ledger and we never see a customer record. It is the least expensive way to find out whether any of this reaches you, and for a good number of organisations it is the only document required.

Readiness assessment

Three to four weeks · fixed fee

Dormancy analysis against every applicable state, exposure quantified with the methodology stated plainly enough to be challenged, due-diligence notice templates in each state's prescribed language, remittance process design, and a filing calendar with named owners and dates. The output is a written assessment suitable for auditors and the board.

Remediation and first filing

Two to four months

We build what the assessment identified: the dormancy matrix against the live ledger, the owner outreach programme, the transfer mechanism and its controls, and the NAUPA II reporting file — alongside the client's team rather than in place of it, because the process must continue to run after we leave.

Annual compliance

Recurring

Unclaimed property is not a project. Every state, every year, indefinitely — with dormancy periods, notice requirements and delivery rules that continue to diverge. We run the annual cycle, monitor legislative change, and keep the position current.

Examination and voluntary disclosure

As required

Where a state opens an examination or extends a voluntary disclosure invitation, we assemble the workpapers, manage the correspondence and defend the methodology. Several states convert non-response into a state-initiated audit, so the response window matters more than it appears to.

We do not work on contingency and we do not take a percentage of anything.

Contingency arrangements are common in adjacent parts of this industry and create an incentive we would rather not hold: the more property we identify, the more we would earn. Our fee is the same whether exposure proves significant or negligible — which is the only arrangement under which our conclusion carries weight.

Data and confidentiality

The readiness assessment does not require customer personal data. Not names, not email addresses, not account numbers.

What we require is an aggregate query result: the count of accounts with no owner-initiated activity for three years or more, segmented by state, by balance band and by asset type. That is a table of figures. It is typically produced by an internal data team in a day, and we never see an underlying customer record.

This is not a workaround. It is how the assessment should be constructed, and it removes the most common obstacle to beginning work. A mutual non-disclosure agreement is executed before any data request. Client material is held in access-controlled storage with multi-factor authentication and segregated by engagement, and we are glad to complete a vendor security questionnaire.

What we are not

We would rather state the boundaries plainly than have them surface later.

We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice. Where a legal opinion is required — and in this area it frequently is — we say so and work alongside counsel.
We are not a tax adviser and do not opine on tax treatment.
We are not a custodian. We do not take possession of, control over, or transfer authority for client assets. All delivery to a state is executed by the client.
We do not act as agent before a state administrator unless appointed in writing for a defined purpose.
We are not a finder or locator. We are engaged and paid by the holder, never by an owner, and we take no percentage of any property identified, reported or recovered.
We are not a software vendor. Where a tool is warranted we assist in selection and implementation, and hold no commercial relationship with any provider.

Getting started

We begin in writing. A short diagnostic — a dozen questions about your corporate structure, where your customers are, and how long the platform has been operating — takes your team under an hour. It requires no customer data and there is no charge for it.

Where the matter is not material to you, we say so in writing and that is the end of it. Where it is, we follow with a written scope and a fixed fee.

Everything we conclude is documented. That is deliberate: a position you can hand to an auditor is worth more than a conversation you have to remember.

Contact

Netanel Avrahami

Principal

netanel@avrahamadvisory.com

Tel Aviv, Israel
Available during US Eastern business hours