Topic: HOW DO WE TRANSFER BITCOIN WEALTH TO HEIRS AND THE NEXT GENERATION (Read 1602 times)

Perhaps you have a point in what you are saying, as a man is very painful working so hard to acquire wealth in other to give your children a better life and good education and when you die your children start fighting over the properties which you have laboured so much to build, so another way of trying or if not completely eradicate it from happening is to device a means of sharing all your properties among them while you are still alive, because that way everybody will no there place and respect your decision, through that way you can also monitor them and guide them on how to invest or run a business. With this method I believe things would be different instead of willing properties after death were as you don't no what your children are doing with your wealth.

That is my point mate, I am working for them , I accumulate all my cryptos for their future because who I am to keep when I am the one that for chance to pass away first?(of course there is uncertainties that might happen.
so I will let them decide , either to take it earlier even when I am still alive? or wait till I die it is for their to decide.
i have my own funds that will be with me in the next life if that happens , or if given a chance to live with them till i close my eyes? then those funds of mine will be their as well.

Your example seems pretty good pixie85 in regards to the holder of the wallet (safety deposit box) not having an ability to access the keys (information) because they don't have the password, and that could work with leaving that information with an attorney, too... - however, what about the scenario of hardware failure.. and are you keeping the backup seed phrase in any location?

And if the wallet in the safety deposit is seized, stolen or otherwise not available - is there a second wallet somewhere?  maybe there would be a need for two safety deposit boxes, but that would not do much good if the attacker ends up being a government that seizes the property and does not return it.. .we likely realize that there are some ways that encryption might end up being broken if they have the actual harddrive.. so if you know that they have it, then you can move the funds, but if you don't know that they have it or you don't otherwise have access to the wallet, then you would not be able to do anything about their trying to beak the encyption of the device, if they believe that there is something of value on the harddrive.

As Bitcoin becomes more valuable, people tend to be more careful, and fewer private keys are lost. If you've educated your heirs about Bitcoin, they should be more focused on keeping things secure and not losing their keys. Unless they don't really understand the value of your Bitcoin holdings.

But just in case this happens, having a highly trustworthy attorney is crucial. However, since it's not always wise to rely entirely on another person, you can get creative with this.

For example, you could go old-school and write a letter with a fancy wax seal on it. You can have your attorney hold onto this letter, and it should only be opened by the person you want to receive it. So that will serve as an alternative if any heir loses private key.

I wouldn't worry too much about my children accessing the funds early, cheating one another, spending it on stupid things, being robbed and all the rest of it.

You're leaving your whole world to them. This includes all your savings, properties, collectibles, things you worked on your whole life. If they are dumb enough to waste it or fight over it, they'll do it anyway, even if you make sure they get to share the bitcoin equally.

If they are stupid or hateful they will find ways to lose or destroy everything. I know it because I had such situations in my close family and in families of my parents.

If you're worried, get a bank deposit box in your name. Bank law ensures that even if it goes bankrupt you will not lose access because bank doesn't treat deposit boxes like money. It's your property they cannot put on auction or anything like that. You know the password, the encrypted wallet is in the deposit box. You can share the password with your children if you like, or write it in your will. Even knowing the password they won't be able to get to the file before your death and a potential robber who cleans your deposit box won't be able to access the money.

The above is not a perfect way but it's much better than leaving them money because the money will lose value with time but bitcoin won't. It's still in custody of a third party but that party cannot use it or go bankrupt and take it as a bailout.

That's actually a good plan as death is an inevitable occurrence in a man life and if you know that you are having some valuable amount of Bitcoin that you would need your family to inherit if death come knocking then splitting the key among your household is one way to go about it. But then there is always this possible of someone actually misplacing their key and just in case this happen what do you think will be the alternative way to go about it.

You raise some good points about various ways to attempt to accomplish the extent to which any of us might want to give full power to someone and then to leave it up to that someone to engage in good practices, whether it is to follow instructions or perhaps even to have proper back ups of their keys that might be necessary for the other, and one of the possible remedies for a negligent or sloppy person might be to exercise 2 out of 3, but even 2 out of 3 might not resolve some situations in which one of the people who is irresponsible does their irresponsibility, and then one of the responsible ones ends up having a real and legitimate problem that even ended up screwing up their backup, and then in that case getting left with only 1 out of 3 ends up being the same as having nothing, since one  of the other keys would still be needed.

Oh and your example of giving full access to the spouse, and perhaps it could be like a joint account and there is enough to completely cover everyone and you use it on a regular basis, and there are supposed to be restrictions on spending from the account up to a certain amount per month... let's say $3k per month or something  like that (and presume the funds are in the ballpark of $1 million^**).. but then if you have your own separate $1 million, then you are still able to cope if your spouse runs off with the funds (or spends beyond the budget), even though that was not supposed to happen, and you did not authorize the spouse to engage in that kind of conduct, you have protected yourself by having right around an equal fund that you keep separate for yourself, just in case.

**Don't get me wrong.  I am not trying to make these numbers untouchable, but I am trying to give an example of a fund reaching a kind of self-perpetuating status, and if the fund had only $300k in it, then the example would still work as long at the income being drawn from the fund is $1k per month, and of course, if there is money flowing into the fund on a regular basis, then the extra cashflow into the fund would increase the amount that can be drawn out.. and if the fund is still in its building stage, then maybe no money would be spent from the principle, and it would just be a fund with extra money, and ONLY the cashflow would be part of the regular monthly budget.

or if you have 2 heirs then best to have them both half of the key? so if ever that you died in accident or even in natural death , then they can just share each other and then boom , take the funds out?
though My wife and my children have idea what is crypto and yes i have split the keys to them 3 , (but of course I have my own funds inside my pocket)  so if ever this happens then they can take it out without any issue.

Not a bad idea, although there's two things to consider in your option:
1. One of the children loses their part of the phrase and they're both in trouble.
2. One of them convinces the other to access the money early, or steals it from the other one, knowing they have it. I would like to think my children are above such things, but it's always something to have in mind.


After reading this a thought came to my mind that I'll share with you. Imagine you set it up now, being in your, say 50s. You make the list of experts for your kids and forget about it and the bitcoins stored on some hardware wallet hidden in a safe. 30 years later, you die and  kids start going through your things. They find the wallet and the list, but those people are either senile, or already dead. Bitcoin on the other hand is worth 5 million dollars a piece and kids are scared if they tell anyone about the wealth you've gathered they'll get robbed and killed, not necessarily in this order.

In the end, it is likely a good thing to recognize and appreciate the splitting of keys and/or the splitting of information.

And, sure sometimes these days private keys might be recognized and then figured out how they might be applied to some kind of a wallet (without even having instructions).

We cannot exactly know the size of Hal's stash, but it is thought to have had been pretty large, even in 2014 terms. ..and yeah, may not have been completely disclosing the details of how his keys were being secured and that might be part of the reason that I suggested that it might not have had been a good idea to be quoting that message from Hal in regards to how it appeared that he may have been holding his keys for his family members.

For sure, your point about the level of security attempting to somewhat match the present or future value of the stash or maybe making changes to the way that the coins are secured if the stash value size changes are surely valid. 

Many of us who have been into bitcoin for a while have likely experienced some level of changed concerns, and for example if someone had bought $10k worth of BTC for $300 each (which would have been around 33 BTC) in 2014 or 2015, may well have ended up surprised as soon as 2017 regarding how fast those values were going up perhaps 50x or more... so the price rise of 2017 may well have incentivized additional security measures or changes to then practices...and even a 5x or 10x change in value may well end up with similar kinds of concerns to change security practices. 

Good point, but the sad truth is you have to store your private keys somewhere. If it's a physical location (be it for paper wallets or electronic devices) it'll always bear a risk of someone unauthorised getting their hands on it.
That could be mitigated by splitting it in 2 or more parts and store each separately. In Hal's case - he referred to one box, but at the time he passed away (2014) nobody really knew where BTC will go, so, I reckon, at that time it was probably not the most valuable asset of the inheritance. And we all tend to apply level of security proportional to the value of what we try to secure.

Private keys, JSON files, Passphrases have become the new way to go in transferring inheritance and/or wealth to heirs. These however should not be clustered in one place as it is not advisable.

If they are clustered together and one person gets a hold of it then it is gone. This can be scattered across safe houses or banks or institutions for safety and their direct heirs should be the ones to assemble it for usage. This is the only approach towards its safety but it still remains a new way to go in terms of wealth transfer to a heir.

I also met some people who suggested this method but I also wondered a lot about this method. Because the purpose of using bitcoin is because we do not want to depend on banks or any third parties. Meanwhile, if we split the seed phase and put it in 2 or more banks, it's like we are giving our assets to them to hold on our behalf once again. In this case, I would rather trust my loved ones like my parents or wife than trust the bank or the government again.

Yes you are absolutely right, you know some people thinks that its hard to share Bitcoin to the next generation, yes it can be hard but if the next generations have any little knowledge about Bitcoin then it can easily be transfered to them but if the next generation don't know about Bitcoin it might be hard for them to use Bitcoin and other crypto currency.
So in that case if anyone wants he's or her next generation to inherits their Bitcoin asset while they are getting older they should try and educate them about Bitcoin in an easy way they can understand little untll they have good knowledge about Bitcoin before they should be given the keys to the wallet so they upcoming will not get scammed or lose the coin to an unknown address.

The only way to do this is by sharing your private key with someone very trusted or just storing it somewhere secure and keeping it locked until the time comes. The way to retrieve your valuables from the lock/vault can be specified on your will. Maybe be use a bank value to store your private keys on the paper wallet. Two parts on two different banks? That way there is lower chance of your keys getting compromised. And I am sure there are other people that have found out better ways to giveaway your wealth to your heirs. Maybe a quick google might help.

Yes, it seems to me that if only the passphrase or keys are given to the inheritors they will not get the bitcoins. There may even be people who don't know about Bitcoin before you die. He does not know how to protect those bitcoins or how to use them for his personal needs. Then that bitcoin might be worthless as well. Because he might make a mistake there for which he might lose that money. They must be well educated about Bitcoin before giving them a private key or passphrase.

Why would you leave bitcoins with people who you think won't trust you? When leaving bitcoins, choose someone who will honor your trust. You may have held Bitcoin for a long time but your next generation may not have held Bitcoin for as long as you have held Bitcoin for a long time. If money is needed and your next generation doesn't have money then of course they will sell bitcoins. It is not uncommon to do so in cases of necessity. If your family is in financial trouble or in danger, of course if you are alive you would have taken that responsibility because in your absence your family has been in financial trouble so if someone in your family can save themselves from that financial trouble by selling your bitcoins then it is never bad. And no matter how much wealth we earn, that wealth is wealth but we cannot take it with us after death, so there is no point in thinking about what will happen after death, what you have done before death is the main thing. You just need to make sure that your bitcoins reach your next generation after your death.

Yes.  Consumables are spent, but there are some kinds of products that are more durable, but they may well not hold their value very well.. so yeah some durables hold their value better than others. 

Surely, just like the lottery player can say that all the value that s/he had put into playing the lottery has some kind of value because it could have had paid off, but then there is nothing to show for it.

It is not necessarily a bad thing to spend your coins and your profits and even especially if you might have had gotten some kind of a windfall.  I am largely using my own windfall from my June 20 stroke of good luck to buy back coins, but I also have a decently higher reserve of fiat that is just available to me.. and probably I have spent some of that..

It is not always easy to identify exactly where source funds are coming from when they are put into a count or just kept in the background in case they might be needed at a later date or maybe they are just available and end up allowing for the non-spending of some other funds that would have had gotten spent if the windfall funds had not been available.

Likely, only you are in a position to really know how well you might have utilized those funds and/or would have it had been necessary to anything with them other than to consume them.. but then if you consume too much of them because you think that "trading is investing," then surely that could cause some levels of excessive bitterness.. I cannot be sure if that might be part of your situation.


Even though Hal is a smart guy.  Many of us already realize that there are problems with safety boxes, and surely we do not know the details of exactly how Hal saved his keys in safety deposit boxes, but that could be one point of failure if that might have had been the ONLY place that he had his keys and/or other instructional information related to his bitcoin.

If you are going to blindly follow someone like Hal and say, well if it was good enough for Hal, then it is good enough for me, then you may or may not get lucky with that approach to your bitcoin based on a safety deposit box being potentially one point of failure.

This is what makes Bitcoin different: the private key and passphrase. Of course, no one can open it if we don't reveal the keys before your death. It's not a good idea to transfer only Bitcoin money if you die because the majority of them, they will sell all Bitcoins located in the wallet. So, if you think you are old, I believe now is the greatest moment to teach them about Bitcoin. They may not believe you at first, but as time passes and you continue to teach them, they will develop an interest in Bitcoin. If you find someone who is suitable for Bitcoin wealth, you can transfer it to him before your death and advise him on what to do with it.

The problem is real and I'm sure there are significant amounts of btc lost forever due to death. Most people don't think about it, thinking they have plenty of time, but then they die suddenly and their stash could be lost for good. Although every holder has their private keys/pass phrases stored somewhere, so technically speaking, they should still be recoverable if you know what to look for.

But if we're talking about building intergenerational wealth, this implies you already have heirs that you trust, so the simplest solution would be just to share private keys with them, or just store them in a safe deposit box like Hal Finney did.