About Stan Reeves, PhD | Bitcoin Custody & Inheritance Guidance

Stan Reeves is a bitcoin custody and inheritance consultant and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Auburn University. He works with individuals, estate attorneys, financial advisors, and institutions who need expert guidance navigating the unique custody and inheritance challenges that bitcoin presents.

Stan spent his career at Auburn applying rigorous analytical methods to complex engineering problems — the kind of discipline that demands precision because small errors compound into large failures. He brought that same disposition to bitcoin when he began studying it seriously in 2021. What he found was a discipline with no margin for error: lost keys stay lost, undocumented inheritance plans leave families locked out, and poorly designed multi-party custody arrangements fail at exactly the moment they're needed most.

The intersection of bitcoin and estate planning is underserved in exactly the ways that matter. Estate attorneys are increasingly advising clients who hold significant bitcoin, but most attorneys have no exposure to custody mechanics. Financial advisors know their clients hold self-custodied bitcoin but lack the vocabulary to ask the right questions. HNW individuals are making consequential custody decisions — often alone, often based on inadequate information — with no expert in their corner. And institutions, from churches to nonprofit foundations, are accepting bitcoin donations and treasury holdings without custody structures appropriate for multi-stakeholder governance.

Stan's practice addresses all of these gaps. The work is advisory — consultation-based, documented, and integrated with each client's legal and financial team. He does not sell hardware, manage keys on clients' behalf, or recommend custodians. His role is to help you think clearly about custody, design a structure appropriate for your situation, and produce documentation that survives the test of time — and of inheritance.

Stan is also an educator. For attorneys, that means CLE programs and guidance on custody mechanics and inheritance planning — one of the most rapidly developing areas in estate law, and one most practitioners have had no formal exposure to. For financial advisors, it means enough fluency to engage self-custodying clients without liability exposure. For HNW individuals, it means a specialist who can explain the nature of bitcoin as an asset and explain the tradeoffs of self-custody clearly, not just recommend a product.

"Bitcoin's value lies in sovereign ownership — but sovereignty without planning is fragility. My work is to help serious bitcoin holders build custody architectures that are secure, recoverable, and designed to outlast them."

Stan Reeves, PhD, PE

How I work

Most bitcoin custody products are designed for the median user. Most inheritance problems, however, happen at the edges — with holdings large enough to matter, situations complex enough to resist generic solutions, and families unprepared to act when the time comes. My work focuses on those situations.

I take the time to understand your specific circumstances, design an approach that fits your life and your estate plan, and produce documentation that holds up when you're not there to explain it.

I am not a custodian, a financial advisor, or an attorney. I am a specialist who works alongside your existing advisors to fill a gap they are not equipped to fill. The relationship is collaborative, not exclusive — and the goal is always the same: a custody architecture that is secure, recoverable, and designed to outlast you. For clients coordinating remote signers, I also built Keylay — an open-source tool for remote multisig coordination that keeps coordination metadata private.

Who I Work With