Topic: Inheriting Bitcoin (Read 985 times)

I have been using their service and I haven't had any problems.

Creating a video is somewhat a very wise option to be done rather than entrusting some wills which would involved some lawyers that might able to know those sensitive infos.
Explaining everything on a single video would already be enough in case you would die to this world.You would really be sure that those assets would be benefited to those love ones you had left.It isnt really that hard to understand or doesnt really require technical knowledge on opening up a wallet.A simple understanding and set of instructions would already be enough.

This applies to holders whose family are far or living overseas, or for holders who's heirs are still young to fully understand how blockchain and Bitcoin works, but in case I prefer to do it manually by teaching my family to understand how it works and to give them all my seeds and private key, so they will be the one to manage all my coins, I will just include the will that they can access the private to a vault where I kept everything.

Passing bitcoin on to our heirs should not be a problem because bitcoin is an asset, and the only difference between it and the regular asset is that bitcoin is a digital asset while others are physical asset, but all are assets that should be documented in our will in the event that we pass on.

Since bitcoin involves the storing of it in a wallet, we should learn to either make use of a hardware wallet which we can save in the safe box in our bank or store it along with the will document that we submit, the only risk with that one is that the lawyer may actually compromise because in my country, I have seen situations where the lawyer actually compromised and then turn the will to favor him rather than favoring the family of the deceased person and having access to the wallet key would not be a difficult thing.

It's good to have a service like this, but I prefer to create a video and a vault where it houses all my private keys from USB, a video explainer that will explain everything about all the coins I'm holding, how to transact trade and open the wallet, your family will be holding a coin it's just right that they know how it works.
It's even better that you teach your family how Cryptocurrency works so when the times comes to inherit all your coins, they know what to do.

It's a great extra layer of security. Just remember that encryption can also lock you out if you're not careful. Consider using a password manager like KeePass (if you don't already) to prevent that from happening.

Well you do have a sold point which is definitely right where someone cant able to access it as long its encrypted.So far i do have 4-5 usb having all the important informations but it isnt encrypted. Yeah i know its a very solid mistake of mine since i got too confident since those sticks are just being hidden withing my vicinity.I do trust up my family members too but its much more better if they're encrypted- Its time to get those usb back before its too late. 

Deep cold storage should be protected by strong encryption, so that shouldn't be an urgent concern.

My mother lives on the other side of the country -- she stores an encrypted wallet of mine in her house. Nobody can access it, and if it somehow gets lost or destroyed, she'll tell me. I don't feel like paying for a safety deposit box and I don't own any other property, so this seems like a happy medium.

One of the rules of backups, in general, is more than two different locations, and the examples given are different houses, different cities, and sometimes even different states or provinces. Different countries generally does not work for a lot of people, as that's too far and too expensive, but that's exactly what big corporations do with their backups, they stuff them in different states and different countries.

It has been called the 3-2-1 rule or the Backup Rule of Three:

1. Have at least three copies of your data.
2. Store the copies on two different media.
3. Keep one backup copy offsite.

To make it clear, here are examples of some things that are NOT backups:

1. Copying your computer stuff to an SD card in the same computer or laptop is not a backup.
2. Backing up to a hard drive that is 6 inches away from your computer is not a backup.
3. Backing up your Gmail to another Gmail account is not a backup.
4. The photos that are still in your camera are not a backup.

The last rule is as simple as just sending extra copies to another house. You do have friends or family or even a storage unit? Some people use bank safe deposit boxes.

And if you use practically any form of encryption, you can even use cloud backups, but treat it as just another location.


As it relates specifically to bitcoin, I make more than one copy of the wallet.dat and just give them two different names. Then I use something like RAR to archive them. I also export either the private keys or the seeds and put them in a text file, then also put them in the same RAR file. I then make more than one copy of the RAR file as these things are small enough to fit into a USB flash drive.

I then put them in 2 separate USB flash drives, but they contain identical data, and stick those together. It's like a low tech form of RAID1 or mirroring. Put them both in some plastic waterproof container or even a tin or something. So cheap you can get from any dollar or thrift store or just use some old box.

Treat this as one unit, then go ahead and create another one just like it. That one, send it to another house. If you don't have another house, or know anyone else you can trust, at least keep it separate from your main house. If you have a yard, bury it away from your house. Don't keep it in the garage or parking unit that is right beside your house.

I'm sure you all guys can think of other ways; be creative. There is no need to bury it under your swimming pool, but I've read someone actually did that, prior to construction.

Go watch John Wick... he buries his gold coins in the basement under the cement floor.

Give me an example of multiple points? You do mean about different locations outside the house or location in terms of places?It do had advantages though but same goes with
disadvantages since you cant monitor it out anytime if those back-ups is still intact or already lost or found by someone.I would be not too confident with such way of storing up keys or phrases.I can risk up to store on my house on different locations as long i dont use up any 3rd party then i wouldnt really worry too much with that.

I still think that educating your heirs on how to use blockchain and investing in Cryptocurrency is  still the best option, not only you are leaving something valuable materially but you are partaking them a technology that they can use in their lifetime and benefit from it, just like it benefits you.

The concept is very risky considering that the family is not crypto oriented. As the OP stated. The risk is, the company that provide this services might steal your bitcoins considering that they know that your family has no idea about this. I prefer to invest in loaded physical coin and put it on my safe box. Then write my last will and testament and give it to my lawyer. Then instruct him to give it when I'm no longer alive.

^ I second that!

dump private key BTC to cryptosteel physical wallet. spouse and childrens were given with pile of those stainless steel cold wallet and know where they were kept hidden in more than a dozen of locations to prevent search and seizure.

1)  Show them how to load that into a appliance (full node) and bitcoin core android wallet to swipe those coins with a QR code generator, and
2)  take your spouse and teenager is to food and other entertainment establishment and travel all over the world regularly
3)  bring no money or credit card with you to where you travel.
4)  Show them and make your spouse and kids to get 2 way BTC ATM to get cash in local currency, and
5)  Repeat steps 2-4 to let your spouse and kids to gain proficiency on getting cash discretely at countries all over the world.

obviously step (4) can be omitted if you have partners that you can trust and regularly referral to in foreign countries.  You also get better rate that way (instead of selling with -7.. -10%, you get to sell BTC at spot and get cash for it)

that's why it's good to have back-ups stored in multiple physical locations. if everything is stored in your house, your house becomes a single point of failure.

This proves that we cannot foresee everything. I wouldn't be worried that a disaster can claim my safe with everything inside because if you make sure the safe is fireproof and build into the wall, such a disaster would claim the whole house. Things like that do happen, but when a plane takes your roof for a runway, you're fucked. It won't matter whether you have bitcoins buried in the garden or hidden under the mattress.


It could be a lawyer firm that archives all the cases in case an employee who deals with a specific case dies. This method has to be used everywhere, because otherwise someone could go free if the prosecutor would happen to have an accident on the way to work, or get a life in prison if the same thing would happen to his defense lawyer.

I'm not exactly sure what the service entails, but it implies usage of a dead man's switch. The original owner would somehow need to provide partial access to his stash, or he keeps something on his person or secret that would be revealed if he's not around anymore.

The simple way to do it would be to use any of the online dead man's switches to send an encrypted email to your family if you do not log on for a certain amount of time. Google has its "Inactive Account Manager" but waits at least 3 months before doing anything.

To prepare for this, your family should have some way to decrypt, preferably something like GPG / PGP. A low tech solution would be a password or passphrase written down and stored somewhere secure where your family can get access to (such as a safe, a physical safe at home) and you regularly back up the wallets or private keys and other required instructions to access the coins.

There is another thread that involves transactions with nLocktime, so you have a premade transaction ready to be broadcast in the future, but won't be available or spendable until after a certain block height or future time.

As for the issue with nLocktime, you can provide the private key to the heirs. It will remain empty until the transaction is broadcast and confirmed, which won't happen until after the specified block has been mined or after the specified unix time.

$400 a month or $5k per year may be too expensive for most, that simply rules out everyone who has less than 10 BTC or so from ever using that service (or less than $100k USD worth of coins.)

the usual answer would be that it's not foolproof for the recipient.

how can you ensure they've adequately secured their private keys? by the time the dead man's switch activates, they may not have control of the wallet anymore. or it may be compromised.

every method has its trade-offs.

Why not just set up a future transaction in the form of nlocktime? It's safer and easier than having a third party having custody over even just one of your multisig keys for any period of time, even though that may sound like it's safe for now.

The absurd costs that they're charging honestly make this very unattractive to any potential user.

$100 and $400 per month is no joke here. That translates to up to $5k a year. You can probably pay for actual inheritance lawyers and have bank safety deposit boxes, among a range of other things for that sort of money.

that's one way, sure. if your loved ones have no idea what to expect then it would be prudent to include very detailed instructions on how to recover the coins. then you'd need to hope the locksmith plays by the rules. there are a couple other potential problems with this approach:

-if you have multiple heirs, there could be a dispute over ownership. that's why people prefer to involve a trusted lawyer in estate matters.
-a safe could be stolen or broken into---i knew someone who had theirs lifted out of their house when they were on vacation. the contents could also be damaged/lost in a bad enough natural/physical disaster.


this still requires trust in a third party---if the lawyer dies or otherwise loses the password, your family will lose everything. ideally, one would want to transfer everything directly to their heirs without this caveat.

You could also have it stored in a safe but without any clues to tell people what it is. When you die your family will have time to give that safe to a skilled locksmith who will open it and give them the things inside.

You could use an escrow. Give the recovery phrase to your relatives and the wallet password to a trusted lawyer. When you die they will be able to contact that lawyer and get the password. He won't be able to steal your money with only that password and they won't be able to do much with the recovery phrase without the password.

The best method is to have someone you really trust and can share your wallet with.

I also had issues trusting these services as well as you can see and I quote


See! Thanks for sharing this! because of that, I will give you love! that is why I stumble across finding a service like this, I just want your opinion about this because I don't really trust banks in handling the matter but my problem is already sold so it's OK.

there's no foolproof method. using a safety deposit box means trusting the bank to protect you from theft or physical disaster. it also requires relying on a will which implies multiple third parties---your lawyer, your heirs' estate lawyers, the probate courts where a judge needs to sign a court order to open the deposit box.

i prefer a method that doesn't involve all these third parties. i hope using locktime for inheritance becomes more intuitive in the future because it's a way to keep things 100% between you and your heir.

Been reading up some thread about leaving up your inheritance using up some multi-sig or services.

On my own side i wouldnt trust up any service no matter how legitimate they are.I agree on whats being mentioned or posted earlier.
I would rather store up those phrases on a safe box and do include to my last will which all instructions and informations on how to claim those coins are there.

It is very difficult to transfer private keys even to relatives. There is no guarantee that these private keys will not be used before. It seems to me that here it is necessary to think more carefully.

I agree, we never know if they will actually do your will after death. It will be better if we just tell our beloved on how to use and about our investment before we left this world. No fees to be included but we can also pass our knowledge about it.

The concept is nice but it seems very risky at the same time costly. Instead of having a subscription at an bitcoin inheriting company we should teach our loved ones about cryptocurrency. If we teach our loved ones about cryptocurrency then we can just leave them a piece of paper or a ledger nano together with the private key before we leave or when we are bedridden. Also it is nice to give them the knowledge how to use bitcoin and how to earn it than just by giving it to them.

this seems like a lot of effort, cost and complications. not to mention risk since you are trusting that the company offering this service is going to stick around for years and not just go under because of lack of customers or something like that!

another problem is when you have to change address or wallet. changing address problem could be solved by using an HD setup (share the seed instead of a single key) but not the wallet change. for instance when you want to upgrade to a SegWit wallet and create a new one. or when you want to claim an airdrop like bcash and have to stop using the old wallet so that you can import it in that altcoin's wallet and claim it. have to create a new wallet afterwards.

As long as it is compliant and pass the laws that governs inheritance we should support this kind of service, with millions of people going to use Cryptocurrency in the future, there's going to be like this kind of service coming up, we all want convenience if we want to pass our inheritance to our heirs but it will be different when it comes to Cryptocurrency, so we need a service to address our concern, I'm pretty sure it will have similar services in countries where Cryptocurrency is very popular.

This is great news since it solves one of the problems of cryptocurrency and proves that bitcoin can also offer what banks nowadays could offer. However, we should make sure that the company is trustworthy, give them time to prove themselves, and prevent being scammed since they'll be responsible to our wallets and private keys. If deemed to be successful, this could pump the market, and maybe attract more investors since worries about losing bitcoin would lessen.

I think its not safe to give your information to other because your wallet information is so important. Why you that if you can tell your family about your bitcoin and your password or anything that can open your wallet. Give to them directly its must safer than what you think.

You will only be putting your funds at risk. It's really hard to entrust your private keys nowadays especially with services like that. I guess entrusting it with your most trusted person would be better. I'd rather share my wallet information with my partner so I will be sure that my earnings would go to my loved ones no matter what happens to me in the future. It's better to have assurance than put my funds at a big risk.

I think this is ideal or put your seed in a sealed box and put it in your will if ever something bad happens and let your attorney do the stuff along with the instruction what to do on the seed or private key in the safe. I am skeptical using another party's services handling my private key.

Think multi sig systems would be the only and best ways for wills and interitances to be formed. Other ways like giving someone/hiding your private keys are just too risky.

So, I am assuming it's a 3 man system and they need all 3 keys to open the wallet? The company has one, and the person has one and the heir has another one. When the person dies, the heir gets 2 and is able to cordinate how to open the wallet with the inheritance company.

Interesting concept. Problem is I wonder if crypto-currencies will be alive for another 60-80 years. Tech is moving very fast nowadays.

Where I'm at there isn't a safety deposit box for over 200 miles. The few there are are rapidly being closed down as banks are saying there's no profit in them, that's if they're not closing down the entire physical branch which they're doing in the thousands too.

Even if a few do stay open stuff like this can happen - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.html

Why go through all these hassles? The third key will be held by Casa and the other key will be kept with a lawyer and you need three out of six keys to have access. What if the lawyer could not be contacted or something went wrong with Casa's inheriting service. All these would just go in vain. Just like the other user suggested. Put the seed on a bank safebox along with instructions. Then write a will. It is this simple lol.

Most of the people I'm related to are richer than me so they can whistle for it. If I die suddenly then tough titty. If I die in a long, lingering and horrible manner I'll be spending most of it on being put down in a truly premier league manner.

If I did decide to preemptively sort them out I'm not going to dick around with unfamiliar companies. I'll cobble something together myself. Perhaps a treasure hunt of some sort.

I'd rather have someone create a smart contract that sends my family my belongings once it is presented with a certificate of decease authorized on blockchain. Or create a company that has a bitcoin address in its propriety and have a contract that stipulates that once I die the private keys to the address will be sent to my family and how the bitcoins will be distributed between my relatives.

Well, I think you're right using services such as these will surely not benefit you but just services that you trust your key with even though there is a key shield set up this will just cost you and regarding the different levels it had it will just cost you instead of keeping that and just add it up to your heir, I just got curious about casa that it might have some good used in the future, 

I guess the thing we need to do is to educate our heir or someone about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because with services like these or not if that person doesn't have knowledge about these examples by trading and selling then there is no used inheriting to him or her.

let's break this down.

the inheritance protocol employs casa's "3-of-5 key shield" setup (it adds one additional key), which is only available at the platinum or diamond levels. platinum costs $150 per month and diamond costs $420 per month! https://keys.casa/keymaster/

it's also an elaborate setup that's supposed to survive legal channels---last will and testament, estate lawyers, probate court:


you trust casa to secure one key (hopefully they'll still exist decades from now) and you trust a bank to secure another.

for a trustless (and free) approach, i prefer the idea of using locktime for inheritance: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/using-locktime-for-inheritance-planning-backups-or-gifts-5180850

and of course, if you trust your heirs, none of this is really necessary. you can give them access.

Why do you even need to use their assitance if you could just do it on your own?
I mean you already knew who you would send it to if you would put up a last will and testament,
So why not make teach that person about crypto or even the basics of crypto I am sure they would find a way to use your crypto when you are gone.
I think this kind of business isn't really going to be great since most of us wouldn't really trust this kind of service with our crypto.
And of course most of us wouldn't pay for this kind of things because we could easily do it for free.

All I know is, I am not going to trust my private keys to a startup. And I believe, that is also the sentiments of most of us here who invested much on their bitcoins.

That's the only possible way I can also think of unless I can trust someone in my family. I can't even trust my wife nor his brothers since I've seen him steal from anyone. There could be a smart contract we can negotiate for this but its still very possible for corruption when developers we know are scammers.

I've read the article and we all know that all funds can only access through private key, we should have something like, there are some holders who made their inheritance to relatives that are away from their location and some who do not know anything in Cryptocurrency, but this kind of service should be regulated to avoid exploitation of the owner's private coin, anyway it's on the contract that's going to be multi-sign and under supervision by lawyers but better by a court.

Put your seed words in a bank safebox and have it in your will. Or any variant thereof. All you need to give are those seed words, use your imagination how you could securely pass them. The will could contain the instructions, or point them here lol.

Mind you, you can make a multi sig wallet yourself too, its not like you need to pay others to do it...

People had that idea before and not based on multisig transactions but on dividing the private key or seed phrase into 2 or more parts and giving each important member of your family one part. This way they will not steal from you but if you die they will meet up and combine it all to recover and divide your coins.

With all these options there's a possibility that one person will lose their part or die and they will all get nothing.

That is the first time hearing Michael Moody's story and it is really heart brokering and at the same time there is a moral to this and his father after his death was quite now let's say maybe had a little interest with bitcoin now, I am sure there are tons of other things and people are now thinking ways to make their love once know their private key and getting the hang of passing someday because that is relatively what will eventually happen to us,

But is Casa's part maybe the multi-sig feature can help their inheritance services but I think trust in their service is needed and I think I am having a hard time in doing, but any comments that will light things up will do.

I think I also heard similar services making sure that Bitcoin left by the deceased can be transferred peacefully and conveniently to the rightful heirs. Well, we will die anyway so why not get prepared for it as we do not really when we can be taken away. This story is illustrative of the problem when there is no proper strategy on the eventual passing of the cryptocurrencies left behind:

"Michael Moody, a 26-year old who died in a tragic plane crash in Chico, California in 2013. Before his death, Michael was a Bitcoin miner, in the words of Michael’s father, “my son was actually one of the earliest people to mine it. He used his computer at home to mine bitcoins when you actually could do it that way, and he had a few, we think.” Two years after the crash, the father started exploring ways to retrieve Michael’s cryptocurrency assets. He has succeeded in piecing together information about his son’s stash of Bitcoin, but he been unable to access his crypto wallets because of the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies."

I am sure that Casa is providing a very good service worth looking at. I also saw similar service providers like TrustVerse with its Proof-of-Death which can a little bit spooky, Safe Haven and DigiPulse. Whatever can be the choice, we are assured that our digital assets and the hard work we put into them will not just evaporate like nothing when it is the time to say goodbye.

While I was browsing the latest Bitcoin news to search for an update positive and negative once then I stumble upon this article that insists that you can now pass on your Bitcoin when you die when you used their service,

And this is Casa's Bitcoin inheriting Service that I think will surely be helpful in the future when you passed away (knock on the hood) and your family and relative doesn't know a thing about cryptocurrency and your Pass Phrase as well, Well I think there is a risk involved in this kind of service your relatives can sure recover your Private key but it can be also an exploit to be stolen as well, but they had promised a multi-sig system that can make the inheritance safer what do you guys think?

https://cryptoslate.com/you-can-now-pass-on-crypto-with-casas-new-bitcoin-inheritance-service/