Topic: HOW DO WE TRANSFER BITCOIN WEALTH TO HEIRS AND THE NEXT GENERATION - page 7. (Read 1663 times)

I find this Codebear post to be a bit of a springboard for my own post in this thread, and I am not sure if I have much to add in light of my having had posted in DdmrDdmr's thread on May 5, 2023.

Also I had not yet read Loyce's thread (already mentioned in this thread) on related topics or fillippone's thread.. and maybe I will put those two back on my "to read" list.

I get the sense that the more that I read through these kinds of topics, the more concerned that I get, even though there surely have been some members, in this thread suggesting that the problem is easy to resolve, which surely does not seem to be the case in terms of how much of a dilemma that we end up putting ourselves in regarding how much information to entrust to various people who we might choose to give them information prior to some kind of an instruction sheet that might be in the form of a will at an attorney's office, and we likely realize that we do not necessarily even have to have an attorney holding an instruction sheet, even though they surely are already used to having responsibility over holding sealed envelopes in which the contents are not read until the person had died.. and they tend to take those responsibilities seriously, but sure they could be a point of failure if they read the contents prior to being authorized to do so.

I don't really like some of the ideas of giving hardware wallets and presumably not sharing the back-up seed, which seems quite problematic if there is a hardware failure, as well as my not liking the idea of putting the harware wallet and the seed in the same place.

I do like ideas of dividing up information while hoping that it is not overly complicated because dividing up information may well end up having the information in one location to be destroyed or compromised, but if the information is just 1/3 of a seed then it is more difficult to use the 1/3 as a way to hack, but if they get 2/3 then it could get closer to being able to hack into the wallets.

And, let's not fool ourselves when it comes to how many places that we might hold bitcoins, so there could be several kinds of pieces of information that might be seeds to wallets and then various accounts that we might have and passwords to the accounts, but if the accounts are known and then there is proof of death, then there should be some assumption that coins held in those kinds of places should be recoverable...

so one thing is recovering the coins and then another thing is making sure that they get to the intended recipient, so yeah there could be some easy ways to do that, if you trust the person not to get into their coins prior to your death , then you could instruct them and pass them privately without going through any kind of dividing of keys or separating the instructions from the keys.  

I don't really perceive the lawyer to be a problem in terms of necessarily jeopardizing the keys (if the keys are not actually given to him/her) - but that could be with anyone who we might trust with the instructions but not given the keys.. but maybe someone else might know that the keys are in three parts and where the three locations are .. but then there also might be two or three sets of the three locations. in case any of the locations might get compromised. which does happen.. houses do burn down, bank safety deposits do get raided (banks are destroyed sometimes too)..

I am not going to claim to know any one particular solution, because some of these matters change through time including which wallets/assets that any of us might hold and how easy it might be to update our information pieces that we are passing on, and surely one of the advantage of physical property as compared with digital property would be that the tangible item is not disappearing at the time of our death, even though the gold bar burried in the yard might not be discovered ever or maybe until 1,000 years later... so yeah the digital information may well die at the time of our death whether it is the private keys or the ways that they are put together, and there may be no way to connect the three pieces of paper with the private key if the instructions are lost.

And Codebears disclosure that even his mother might not be a good place to leave keys if there might be some failures of the person holding such keys to exercise good judgement, and surely judgement might be different whether it devolves into the levels of mal-intentions or just incompetence, negligence or merely differences in ways of considering what is reasonable and what is not reasonable.

Pretty good the same as what i thought. Although hardware wallets have expiry i mean they wont work after such a long time say 10 years of not/using it, its battery/screen will simply wont work anymore, same as my ledger problems. So including it on your vault will give a hint to anyone who will get it later and the seed phrases.
Or simply let your family lawyer do the work later on..

The general consensus is that you'd need not a tool or a mechanism, but a laid out plan of how you're going to pass down your cryptocurrency wealth to your descendants. And I pretty much have an idea of such.

You have to first ensure that you're using a cold wallet, like a trezor or a hardware wallet before you die. That ensures that your funds don't accidentally fall victim to hackings or mismanagement if you keep it in exchanges. Once that's settled, keep your trezor wallet/hardware wallet along with the seedphrase/passcode in a single vault. That ensures safety and security, as well as the convenience of knowing what the authentication is. After which, include these assets in your will and testament, along with the shares that your kids will receive in full explicit detail, so no one mistakes/confuses which or who's got the share of who.

Pretty much easy and it does not involve any form of tool that could fail, or mechanism that could turn against its main purpose.

The best way to transfer wealth to the next generation comes in two different aspects but both operate together and these two fundamental aspects, tools to effectively transfer tour Bitcoin assets to the next generation and this are:

1: disclosure of your wallet balance and transfer of wallet private recovery keys to the next of kin.
2: giving the one that wants to inherit the assets the basic knowledge of cryptocurrency and how to secure their assets guiding their self against any possible attack by maintaining high privacy.

Just like i said above, the only way to transfer Bitcoin holdings is by giving up the private keys to the wallet and in doing that one need to take into accounts some other underlying factors that can expose your privacy and security of the account.


This is the more reason one need to build a food basic knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies  in the life of those around tou in that way you don't necessarily need to spend too much time or risk too much in attempting to transfer the wealth to your next generation since they already know the way to handle themselves.
Well thought out mate and nice to see that you decide to ask such here since it will help all of us to learn how best to transfer wealth in digital formats.

Transferring assets to heirs is not entirely about trust issues. It so happens that life is unpredictable and one cannot really say when the time is up to leave this word. The reason people device means of transferring assets is to ensure the right people have access to the assets when they are gone.

You might not hand over your assets when you are alive and active unless it is a partial handover and not complete handover. I know some people do this but the chances of handing over everything including your passwords  and secret phrases to your heirs, when you are still alive, is very slim hence, the need to work out motherlities this can be done efficiently.

TBH, I don't know how investors who doesn't have any people to trust their assets with when they die will give their Bitcoin, and other assets to their heirs. I guess I'm lucky that I know a person whom I can trust my assets with if the worst thing happens, and I die.

Having a person or people where you can trust with is the best solution for this. The problem is, there might be a chance that the one who you trust right now will be the ones that will backstab you, making them a traitor, and has a chance to steal your assets. The chances are low, but it isn't zero right. Anyway, trusting a relative, or in this care an heir is very hard thing to do. Maybe just putting it in a hardware wallet, then teaching them how to access it is the best way. Of course you will only give them the wallet when you die, or at least you feel that you will be. In that way, it would be better than just forgetting those Bitcoins.

The Bitcoin communities nowadays are significantly bigger than years ago. Each market cycle, each bull run, Bitcoin is more noisy on social media so that it becomes more popular and successfully attracts new people to Bitcoin communities.

I believe we will witness it again with 2024 halving and 2024 - 2025 bull run.

Treating Bitcoin as a commodity, a security, accepting it as legal tender or does not accept it as legal tender, it's fine enough for locals to use bitcoin for transactions. Even laws and governments have yet officially protected Bitcoin investors in some nations, if they have yet prohibited it, you have no legal issues by holding bitcoin or using it.

My belief is Bitcoin will be accepted more in legal aspect and the trend in legality will be better for Bitcoin communities globally. Stay positive and get rid of worry about legal regulations against Bitcoin. Locally there might be some barriers even very serious but globally the picture is better.

BTC-community is waiting for the recognition and acceptance of bitcoin, which in turn will entail legal regulation. It is likely that in most countries BTC will be treated as property or an investment asset, like securities. Accordingly, it will be possible to leave a will or testament at bitcoin. So far, the legal basis for this has not been created, but I am absolutely sure that if the governments of countries officially recognize btc, then laws will appear that allow leaving it as a legacy. How exactly this will be implemented is not yet clear, because there is no precedent yet, but it is this that will push for the distribution of the will.

You just need a trusted person to do the job for you so that once your gone he can distribute your bitcoin wealth to your successor.

Or maybe you can hire an attorney and write a last will and testament about your wealth since for sure with this you can assure that your BTC funds will equally distributed according to what you write on documents handle by your attorney. This maybe bit technical but for sure you can successfully pass your wealth to anyone if you think about selecting those people who can do the job for you.

One way to access a Bitcoin wallet is to include private keys or seed phrases, without private keys or seed phrases you can never access a wallet. Writing a will containing the wallet address and private keys or seed phrases is then equipped with simple directions to open the wallet and step by step the process of disbursing it into fiat is very difficult to understand if the beneficiary is not equipped with knowledge about Bitcoin.

In my opinion, the simplest way to inherit Bitcoin is by making a short video containing a simple explanation of how to cash out an inheritance in Bitcoin. This way will be more easily absorbed in the recipient's brain than writing in a will.

People put on a show to regulate the unavoidable chaos of life and death. Think about it: Human history has seen us evolve from hunters to farmers to computer scientists. After the fact, we're protecting our digital assets? So cute!

A bank's safe? How come? Maintaining physical copies of digital asset keys? Writing an email on a stone pad. Banks are what crypto seeks to avoid. Giving them our digital keys is ironic, if not dumb. Work on ways for our loved ones to get to our things when the inevitable happens instead of a bank vault. Modern means coming up with fresh ideas and updating our thinking. However, secure your gold coins with your ledger. Its oddly gorgeous.

Well, you have spoken well but from what I could derived from op statement writing a WILL in form of bitcoin phrase and  hand it over to your lawyer or his lawyer is something unimaginable, why because those asset being bitcoin can be stolen by even your lawyer or your wife without knowing since bitcoin address doesn't show or displays recipient name. To say it's your lawyer or your wife, unlike other WILL's that is being controlled by Third party (Money is easily to managed and WILL to their kinds, which involved the bank and your Lawyer and your wife) So, there is no way bank could initiate any transaction without your wife, your lawyer to take records of all every that is happening. Bitcoin can be easily stolen, lemme just break it down without any hidden truth.

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Do you know if op is already 70 years and his kids are still tender in a way they can't handle bitcoin transaction or they don't have the knowledge of bitcoin. Naturally the best is to teach just as you already said but what in a way those kids can't manage funds properly and this keys (Phrase) are being handed to them how do you think those sets of kid can be able to manage those funds and can they secure their phrase properly because including Third Party is putting funds at a very high risk to say.

What about spouse?
Yes, there are some wife who doesn't care and they always wants their share and sometimes they alway create issues haven known that the man is super wealthy, they could file for a deviors in order for them to have their wealth. My question is, do you still care about such wife giving her your phrase to store for your kids?

The answer is simply No because such person is only wanting to have all control of your assets to her way, what about including a family relatives, I think is another huge problems because the death doesn't speak after laying like a log of wood, and you wouldn't know how those funds are being managed at your absence.
So the best is just to keep eyes on your children for them have the basic knowledge and then come up age that is the only way possible.

I agree with you. The reality is that some of us will either not even bother doing the suggested steps to ensure that our heirs will have the bitcoin we worked hard for or will not have enough time to do so. Dead comes unexpectedly for most of us and therefore we cannot blame those who were not ready and do not have a will or a note that states who will have who. However, seeing as many have replied to this post, it shows that we are aware that such scenario will happen, and thus it should push us to prepare as early as now.

I have discussed this before with a thread, and there's actually books that are written that specifically address how to pass bitcoin/cryptocurrency when you die.  The truth is most people aren't going to prepare themselves and will end of never passing their bitcoin to anyone, so don't be that person, and create a will with special instructions to your beneficiaries so that your hard earned bitcoin doesn't go to void.

This is why its better not to focus yourself on single point in terms of investment but its not bad to include Bitcoin into your lists of assets or investment on which that our children are the ones
who would really be able to benefit out. We know that it isnt something that simple or easy since not all parents would be having the capable on doing multiple investments and sources on which they could really be able to left those things behind when they passed away. Its true that if you do have plans on passing your coin posessions on the time that you do pass away then making it sure to be on a will or something that would really be telling them about on how to access those coins in the right time. Its always been that preferable that you should really be that telling them or explaining to them
on what it is so that on the time comes that you are gone, they do know on what they would gonna do.

It is not only important that they know how essential what they have been left is, but it is also important to instill in them how to make sure that this does not end and continue to grow, since normally parents leave everything they have in their hand accomplished of their children and do not consider if they have had the necessary education to take this responsibility that would allow them to continue with a stable life, so they end up wasting and being in ruins after a certain time, for the simple fact that they not  were teach how to manage financially, it is for this reason that before thinking about leaving them an inheritance as significant as bitcoins would be, it is best that you integrate your children into this world and teach them why it is so important to continue working so that these assets can bring them benefits in their future, and this can be done by giving them the opportunity to generate their own earnings.

Wealth can and should also be in the form of knowledge. Plan on how your heirs and next of kin should have knowledge about bitcoins and know the benefits, so that asides just leaving them with bitcoins, there will also be the knowledge which cannot be exhausted that you have left and shared with them. It will no longer be your problem how your heirs decide to spend or use whatever they get from you since you will be dead, but at least letting them know the importance of what you have left them because of the knowledge they have will help them make better decisions about what has been left for them. 

Its recommendable but there are certain individuals which would really be having doubts on sharing up their wallets private keys while they are still living on the sense that they would really be able to have access on the time

that he/she would be deciding on telling them about those keys which it might really be that a selfish act but its totally true that not everyone would really be that confident on telling them so. Even myself havent decided on telling my wife about my wallets PK but in overall sense then it would really be just that right that you should really be telling them about the basic principles of crypto on how things works and how things to be retreived.
So the solution in my part would really be storing up instructions on my pc and the PK is located on a certain hard drive or usb or whatever offline things you could really be able to put on.
Once they do have that kind of awareness or knowledge, then accessing those coins wont really be that much of a problem.

I like how you emphasized sharing the knowledge and ensuring they have information about Bitcoin. Granted that you will be able to pass down your Bitcoin assets to your heir, it will all amount to nothing if they do not know how it works and how to make the best use of it. It will be wasted and all the hard-work you did for btc will be nothing to them if you do not share your knowledge as well.

The private key/Seed phrase needs to be properly guarded if it needs to be stored in the safest place like most people store other valuables. Losing the private key will close access to opening the wallet, nothing can be retrieved when the private key is lost. Educating heirs also needs to be done as early learning or introducing Bitcoin to them earlier than expected.
The understanding and knowledge about Bitcoin investment that is obtained from people they believe is more easily accepted than that taught by others, we can explain to them the uses and advantages of Bitcoin. Showing transaction history to them is also needed to increase their interest in learning about Bitcoin investment, heirs need to be given an understanding so they can cash out assets when something happens to us.