Inherited money rarely stays in its original accounts because beneficiaries prefer moving funds into their existing financial accounts.While banks try to retain these assets, their efforts rely on an unproven assumption: that these heirs want the same financial products their parents used.
Surveys of asset holders conducted over the past year challenge that assumption. In fact, many young users have already transferred a portion of their savings elsewhere. Approximately 67 million adults in the United States (roughly one in four) hold digital assets, with the majority belonging to the demographic groups set to receive most of this wealth transfer. These beneficiaries are accustomed to earning visible returns on their cash through transparent, accessible daily applications.
Sentora’s Fintech Onchain: 2026 Report details the size of this population, how they deploy their capital, and where they prefer to keep their assets.
Bank executives should pay close attention to this preference data: 75% of digital asset holders would prefer to manage these assets directly within their existing bank. The landscape of the upcoming wealth transfer presents a unique opportunity. Financial institutions have a critical window to deliver the modern products younger generations want, but they must first understand who they are, what benchmarks they use to evaluate returns, and how quickly they choose a preferred financial institution.
Next-Gen Beneficiaries Are Already Active Digital Asset Holders
While estimates of the wealth transfer vary in scope, they all highlight the same trend.
Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion in United States wealth will shift by 2048, with roughly $46 trillion passing to Millennials. Meanwhile, Visa's economics team estimates a $36 trillion transfer to Gen X and Millennials over the next twenty years. Both projections represent the largest reallocation of household assets on record and point to the same recipient generations.
Adoption has run ahead of the transfer on both sides of it. Among people who bought digital assets for the first time in the year to March 2026, 28% were aged 55 or older, against 14% of everyone who entered the market between 2009 and 2024. In other words, the entry point has widened past the demographic most institutions still picture, showing that the older generation is adopting digital assets alongside younger heirs.
While ownership metrics highlight the sheer scale of digital asset adoption, usage patterns reveal how these assets directly intersect with daily banking products. Four out of ten holders regularly transfer funds to friends and family, and a similar proportion use digital assets for everyday transactions. Furthermore, around 80% of Gen Z and Millennial customers surveyed by Santander identify growing their savings as a top financial goal. This behavior mirrors traditional current accounts and savings products rather than speculative trading accounts, placing digital assets directly alongside core retail banking services.
Figure 1. The generations receiving the transfer already hold digital assets, and three quarters of them want to hold them at their own bank.
Higher Yields and Familiar Products Drive Asset Migration
When deciding where to place an inheritance, new generations evaluate options their parents never had.
In September 2026, the United States national average savings rate stood at 0.63%, while regulated on-chain dollar strategies generated returns between 2.6% and 7%. Tokenized Treasury funds provided 4% to 5.25% net of fees, backed by the same short-dated government debt as traditional savings accounts.
Additional options offered higher yields based on collateral: blue-chip on-chain lending markets paid 3.5% to 6%, curated stablecoin vaults averaged a 4.8% median (reaching up to 8%), and Robinhood's on-chain Earn product offered a fixed 7% on USDG for one year. Strategies using tokenized real-world assets delivered even higher returns; for example, Sentora's RWA vault returned 10.21% on PYUSD deposits over thirty days by lending against tokenized collateral, with all holdings and rate histories published continuously.
For instance, an uninvested $250,000 inheritance held in a standard cash account earning 0.63% yields roughly $1,575 annually. Placing that same amount in a curated vault with a 4.8% median return produces $12,000, while a 12-month fixed product at 7% via Robinhood generates $17,500. Users are comparing a modest four-figure return to a substantial five-figure sum, all presented within products that openly detail their rates, fees, and underlying assets before any funds move.
Figure 2. One year of return on a $250,000 inheritance, on the same short-dated government debt.
It’s worth mentioning that these on-chain returns are variable and historical rather than contractual, and balances fall outside FDIC deposit insurance. Thus, banks have a clear duty to explain these differences, although doing so effectively requires offering the product alongside the guidance. Without a competitive alternative, advisors are left asking clients to accept significantly lower yields for protection they may not prioritize on this portion of their wealth.
Indeed, data suggests that, when backed by a solid product, this messaging resonates strongly with account holders: three-quarters of United States digital asset holders want their primary bank to support digital asset management alongside traditional accounts. Furthermore, a majority of all respondents (including 40% of non-holders) say offering these capabilities inside their primary bank account would encourage them to start investing.
In short, demand for integrated financial services is clear, but banks have a limited window to capture it.
The Default Gets Chosen Once
Inheritance retention runs on a shorter clock than the transfer it belongs to, which is what makes delay expensive. The handover spans two decades, while the decision about where the money lives gets made once per estate, usually within the first year of the beneficiary taking control. This means providers that ship yield-bearing products in 2028 will be selling into relationships that were settled in 2026.
Winning a default back costs more than holding it, because the balance that consolidated elsewhere took the payment behaviour, the savings relationship and the data with it. Reclaiming any of that means paying acquisition costs against a customer who has already formed a habit and rated the experience.
Institutions without competitive digital asset products risk losing assets during the transfer process. On the other hand, banks that offer modern, yield-bearing alternatives before an estate closes are far better positioned to retain these customers in the long term.
Sentora designs and manages the risk mandates behind earn programs at consumer platforms, including the vault strategies inside Kraken DeFi Earn.
Read the full analysis. Sentora’s Fintech Onchain: 2026 Report sets out who holds these assets, what they do with them and where they want to hold them, with the rate comparison and the product architecture behind each live program.
