Digital Assets

None of us can deny the fact that the Internet revolution of the 1990s has changed the lives and habits of contemporary man. The World Wide Web and the Internet laid the foundations of modern commerce, provided new forms of communication, and facilitated the search for information and the collection of data.

Before the age of the Internet, people owned only physical assets: real estate, money made of metal or paper, paintings and other valuables, books and other intellectual property.

In the digital age, our possessions are no longer only physical but also digital. So, how do we define a digital asset?

What is a digital asset?

It is difficult to determine the correct definition of a digital asset. The digitalization of society is developing at such a rapid pace that new and different categories of assets are being added almost every day.

Probably the simplest definition of a digital asset is anything that exists in digital format and comes with the right of ownership, use and legal control.

It is important to say that a digital asset does not differ from a physical asset in terms of its potential to provide a current or future economic value to an individual or an enterprise company. In this sense, digital assets are the digital representation of traditional assets that generally do not have the legal status of currency or money (although in some cases they do) and are not issued or guaranteed by a central bank or public authority.

Most of them are accepted by individuals and legal entities as a payment method, can be transferred, stored, and traded electronically, and can be used for investment purposes, but they are not legal tender and are not guaranteed by the central banks.

Recently, some of the cryptocurrencies, e.g., Bitcoin, were officially adopted as legal tender in some countries, whereas in other countries, cryptocurrencies are illegal and banned either completely or implicitly.

Digital asset types

Although there is still no official classification of digital asset types, we can easily identify 3 distinct groups: Digital financial assets, Digital intellectual property, and Digital creative assets.

Digital financial assets

Payment tokens - A payment token is the purest form of cryptocurrency; it is a medium of exchange of digital money through blockchain technology. Cryptocurrencies are not tangible, but this does not prevent people from using them for purchasing goods and services or as an investment tool.

Utility tokens - Utility tokens are the digital version of the well-known vouchers that we use to purchase products or services. Utility tokens provide one-time access to a specific product or service.

Security tokens - Security tokens are the digital representation of conventional securities such as company shares, bonds, or certificates, digitized through blockchain technology and embodied in crypto tokens.

Digital intellectual property

Digital intellectual property that you have protected is also considered as a digital asset. Some types of digital intellectual property might have great monetary value. Good examples of digital assets with great monetary value are:

Registered trademarks
Software programs
Patents and trade secrets
Copyrighted digital books, music,etc.

Digital creative assets

Digital creative assets are usually linked to companies and their marketing, but that does not mean that individuals do not possess creative assets as well. Digital creative assets are simply the digital analog of traditional creative assets. Typical examples of such assets are:

Photos
Images
Graphics
Audio files
Video files
Presentations
Spreadsheets

Digital asset management

Digital asset management has several different contexts, depending on whether it is meant to serve an enterprise company or an individual.

Digital asset management systems for businesses

B2B enterprise digital asset management systems allow users to store, search, find, and use digital content, e.g., artwork, logos, blog posts, and corporate photos. These are digital files in which the enterprise has invested resources to create and represent a current, future, or potential economic value to the entity.

Digital asset management services for individuals

On the other hand, digital asset management services for individuals aim to help them not only to store, find and use their digital assets but also track and manage them easily, which is vital in everyone's daily life.

Digital asset protection

The protection of digital assets has two aspects: cyber security protection and protecting your assets from being lost.

While it is perfectly understandable why society is obsessed with the problem of cyber security, there is no reliable explanation for why people rarely protect their assets from the hazard of being lost.

And while the adoption of digital assets has redefined the world of finance, giving people new investment instruments and facilitating cross-border payments, the adoption of digital asset protection against the risk of these assets being lost is still in its infancy.

Digital inheritance services as a means of asset protection: why is it so critical to use them?

Why using a digital inheritance service is so critical for you and your loved ones

Today, we all possess at least some digital creative assets in the form of photos, videofiles, audiofiles, etc.. But in the future, the adoption of digital financial assets will increase dramatically, both for companies and individuals, and then many of us will possess some kind of digital financial asset.

Now the use of a digital asset inheritance service seems more and more important.

Understanding what digital assets exist and navigating the rights for heirs to access and use those digital assets after a person has died is extremely difficult if no digital inheritance has been put in place.

Due to a lack of legislation regulating the inheritance of digital assets, there is a limited ability to identify and locate these assets in the event of the owner passing away. There is a high probability that these assets will be lost forever, not only to the owners’ loved ones but also to society in general.

DGLegacy helps to protect your digital assets

How does DGLegacy help you to protect your digital assets?

With DGLegacy, you can easily catalog your digital assets, which enables you to protect not only them but also your loved ones should an unforeseen event happen to you.

You are able to catalog your digital, financial, and non-financial assets, designate your preferred beneficiary to them, and have them notified at the time you choose – while ensuring that your executor will know where to find your important inheritance documents.

With DGLegacy, you can protect your digital assets. Your secure document and password manager with digital inheritance also makes it easy for you to keep your list of digital assets and beneficiaries up to date.

This way, in the event of anything unforeseen happening to you, your loved ones:

Are aware of your assets
Can identify and locate all your assets
Can minimize the chance of unclaimed assets.

This is achieved with the following easy steps:

Catalog assets and passwords

Designate beneficiaries and trustees

Detecting if something happens to you

Informing your loved ones about the assigned assets and passwords

Support for your loved ones

Catalog assets and passwords

You catalog the assets and passwords that you want to protect via DGLegacy, with the minimum basic information about the assets that will allow your beneficiaries to identify and locate them.

We don’t ask for confidential information such as your bank account number, the value of your stock options, or financial account numbers!

Next step

Designate beneficiaries and trustees

Beneficiaries are the people whom you appoint to be informed about the assets and passwords that you assign to them. These are usually your partner, your children or your extended family members, such as siblings and parents.

You can choose whether the beneficiaries are to be notified at the time you create the asset or only in the case of an unforeseen event.

If your beneficiaries are, for example, elderly people or children, they might not be proficient with the type of assets assigned to them. In that case, we recommend that you assign trustees for each of your assets. If something happens to you, they can help the beneficiaries to locate their assigned assets and claim ownership.

Next step

Heartbeat protocol

The custom-engineered Heartbeat protocol of DGLegacy verifies that you are OK and detects whether anything unforeseen has happened to you.

It is a safe procedure which also aims to eliminate the possibility of false detections of unforeseen events at any cost.

This is implemented through a multistep process, described on the How It Works page.

Next step

Heartbeat protocol triggering (unforeseen event detection)

If there is no confirmation in response to any of the reminder emails or phone calls, part of the Heartbeat protocol, the system detects that an unforeseen event has happened to you.

Then the notifications which you have configured into the system about the catalogued assets and the associated beneficiaries and trustees are triggered.

Next step

Support for your loved ones

Our ultimate goal is to provide you with the right service to protect your assets and secure your loved ones’ inheritance.

Our team of experts worked with a renowned law firm to offer additional protection for your loved ones through the legal package “Guide and Inform”, part of the Platinum subscription.

In the case of an unforeseen event, the law company will engage with the beneficiaries to guide and help them in the process of claiming the assets you’ve assigned to them.

DGLegacy is great for protecting my assets and my family. So far I was storing my assets’ information on a google sheet shared with my wife, but I always worried that my assets will be lost if …

Victor

Strategic Alliances Manager - dmarcian

This is a service that could make you sleep well in a time of crisis. Knowing your family is sorted out and you have every valuable under control is priceless.

Vlad

Senior Engineering Manager - VMware

Atlanta, Georgia, United States.

Finally a peace of mind. I always wanted a tool where I could see a snapshot of my assets, track them, and decide what to share, with whom and when.
Because my assets were stored in different systems …

Ingrid Henke

Founder - ARRIVA relocation services

Berlin, Germany.

Knowing that DGLegacy exists is such a relief! Up till now, I’ve put my head in the sand when it came to thinking about my assets because it was so stressful with no real solution in sight. I ca…

Alara Vural

Founder - Alara Vural Coaching

London, UK.

I have been using a secure vault and password manager for years but I always worried that my family won’t be aware of most of this information if they need it. I really like that DGLegacy combines p…

Agnieszka Michalik

Software Architect - HERE Technologies

Berlin, Germany

DGLegacy enables me to easily track and organize all my passwords and assets.
The most important thing is that the digital inheritance capability of the service ensures that loved ones will be informe…

Stella Schmitz

International HR Executive