Shortly after joining a Zoom call with Eisen, company co-founder and CEO Allen Osgood experienced an unexpected revelation: the state of New York was holding unclaimed funds belonging to him. He learned this through a search of a publicly available database, where he discovered that he had overlooked money awarded to him by his college, likely stemming from a class action lawsuit. This unclaimed money had been transferred to the state under a process known as escheatment, which occurs when assets are turned over to the government after a set period of inactivity, requiring Osgood to fill out forms to retrieve his funds.
This situation illustrates the very purpose behind the creation of Eisen—an initiative aimed at minimizing the number of individuals who unknowingly leave their assets to languish in accounts managed by U.S. states. Eisen provides a service for financial platforms to streamline the escheatment process and assists in locating customers to prevent such occurrences from happening at all.
Osgood, who previously served as a product manager at Coinbase, is particularly focused on cryptocurrency, an asset class that is increasingly being classified as escheatable property by various states. While individual amounts may be small, the cumulative total of unclaimed funds is significant, with states holding an estimated $70 billion collected via escheatment.
On Tuesday, Eisen announced it had secured a $10 million Series A funding round led by MissionOG, bringing its total funding to $18.5 million. Prior to this, Eisen raised an $8.5 million seed round led by Index Ventures, previously unreported, with participation from First Round Capital, Cowboy Ventures, Homebrew, and Restive Ventures.
Osgood remarked on the broader implications of escheatment for various financial sectors, stating, “Across crypto, brokerage, and fintech… companies are effectively being extorted by the states, which very rarely return money to users.” He elaborated on Eisen’s mission, explaining that the platform aims to collaborate with financial institutions to analyze millions of accounts against complex state regulations, ideally reconnecting users with their funds before they are taken by the state.
Escheatment can be triggered by a variety of circumstances, including the death of an account holder or simply forgetting to check an account. Funds typically remain dormant for three to five years before being eligible for escheatment, after which states often liquidate assets such as stocks and cryptocurrency, with unclaimed funds remaining on the state’s balance sheet indefinitely.
In recent months, Eisen’s services have gained traction, particularly within the crypto industry, following a surge of new users during the 2021 bull market. Osgood notes that many compliance teams within crypto firms are unprepared for a potential wave of escheatments.
When customer funds are surrendered to escheatment, financial firms risk alienating their users, potentially driving them away from the platform altogether. Eisen is currently tracking approximately $700 million in crypto assets predicted to be eligible for escheatment by 2026.
Certain states, including New York and California, classify cryptocurrency as escheatable property. Osgood suggests that an upcoming wave of escheatments could signal a challenging transition for the evolving crypto landscape. He warned, “We’re going to see crypto whales get liquidated through literally no action of their own. It’s about to wash over crypto.”
