Topic: Leaving Behind Crypto When You Are Gone? (Read 510 times)

Read examples of people gone and they never gave their family or relatives their keys to their crypto.  How do most of you handle this?  Now if you have everything in your nano ledger s or trezor or even electrum for example, well you give them the 12 or 24 word seed and they have it.  Now i thought of some issues.  What if they dont know how to operate a computer?  Who do they turn to?  Are there bitcoin services where when someone is gone, their family or relatives go to that service and say this is the code or phrase for the crypto and they mention if its stored in a hardware wallet or exchange or electrum etc and have that service get their crypto for them for a price?  Like it will cost $100 or $500 for the service?  Such as they would then transfer the crypto to the family's own wallet or contact the exchange and have them set up the crypto to be sent to their family member's account?


The other issue comes then is taxes.  Most likely that person who has crypto stored most likely did not pay all or most or any of the taxes assuming they were holding for a long time.  Now if they paid all the taxes, well you could transfer the money to the family member but there is only a certain limit they can transfer a year without taxes i believe right?  This is concerning ppl in the US  Now what if that person paid taxes on some of it or none of it.  Well the family can't just take the money into their bank account since that person didn't pay any or entire taxes of it.  So how in the world would that work then?  Because when you file taxes on crypto, it needs to be written down when was the coin bought and sold and at what prices.  The family or relative wouldn't have a damn clue about it.  They also wouldn't know when they got it and say that person was a trader, they wouldn't have access to say the 500 or 1000 plus transactions that person did etc even if most were basically buying bitcoin and selling it for altcoin immediately since most altcoin you can't go from altcoin to usd or usdt etc.



Does anyone have experience or tips on this?  I think leaving crypto behind in a hardware wallet is the easiest right?  But what if some were in an exchange like bittrex or binance?  Do they contact bittrex or binance about it and then send in the paperwork?  Of course they would need that person's binance or bittrex email address and that person most likely had 2FA.  How does that work then?  I assume coinbase probably would be the easiest to work with?  Now let say that person also had their own wallets in their computer like for example bluecoin or greencoin where its not compatible with hardware wallet and they have some of these wallets on their computer.  Now if their family has the seed or phrase for this, they can claim it but if they have no clue how to do this on computer, are there services that allow this?  So imagine someone has crypto in their trezor or ledger and some in computer like bluecoin and greencoin and some in binance and coinbase.  Are there services that would help them recover all these for a fee?  Thus they would help that family email binance of coinbase assuming that family doesn't even know how to use computer?  Such as that person left behind a paper that says


ledger wallet seed


24 word phrase



binance


email
password



coinbase


email
password



bluecoin wallet

account adfsmskdj
password lkfasdjfsdfas


greencoin wallet


accounta sdfdskjjksda;jasdfj
password aflkdskafjdsjfas;jldf




Are there places where they can bring this to in public like an office or something and that company or business help them recover everything for a fee?  I assume it probably would be like a fee for each place its located?



Then they probably have to contact an accountant with all these accounts right?

I have given hints to my wife for my password for my trezor and i own an extremely small amount. anyone with a serious amount should have a passcode to a set of metal plate in their house that spell out a private key to their funds. If i was smart and had money I would do that, unfortunately from my experience most other crypto enthusiast especially with funds don't trust their wives.

I'm afraid we could just end up our life without someone we could teach before anything to happen to us. I know some of our family members won't have such understanding with crypto as same thing we do it. Leaving with them the keys, passwords or anything about our crypto wallet isn't enough for them to  get of what we left if they still don't have knowledge about this. May teaching them or engage them with crypto earlier would be a big help.

we can't live in isolation we have to trust someone a family member for example to leave him a copy of the private keys / password / 2fa etc to use only in case of extreme necessity, for example i would keep the altcoins on a ledger nano or on a paper wallet of which i would leave a copy of the private keys on a encrypted usb pen to a trusted person...

There is something you need to remind yourself before you leave those passwords and username to someone you know. You need to make sure that they know cryptocurrency. I'm not expecting me to leave this world so early, but we don't know when that thing will happen so we need to prepare on everything. This is why I am teaching my brother how cryptocurrency works and I have a notepad in which all my accounts from different exchanges was typed on that notepad. And it's just on the desktop of my PC.

Does anyone have experience or tips on this?

1. If you know about crypto, and you have a family that you trust, then start with educating them about cryptocurrency and basic stuff about computer. It is not that hard to teach them how to manage seed imo.
2. If there's no relative who can operate a computer, and it is not possible to teach them how to do it, then the best option is to cash out your crypto once in a while and transfer the money to their account.
3. I think there are some services like that, but I personally won't trust anyone outside my family except if we can use multi-sig. Unless you can access a store vault in Swiss which values privacy and personal matter a lot.


Can't comment regarding taxes as it differs in each country.


You should never leave your crypto in exchange in the first place. If it were me, I'd always withdraw all crypto from exchanges, saves all seeds/password etc in a safebox with key and I'd tell my wife or kids how to manage it. But if such case like that happened, then your best best is to contact exchange support and proving that the original owner is dead (good luck with that).


They can access your 2FA. If they know your password & 2FA code plus email address (+its password), they can reset it. But I believe some exchange also requires SMS verification on top of this (depends on your settings tho).

IMO all of your issue is easily solvable if we can:
1. Teach our family about crypto and computer, at least on how to use it to manage crypto asset.
2. Prepare the backup/key/seed and save it in a safe place for them.

I am sure almost anyone who holds a big amount of bitcoin worth at least a few thousands of dollars have a safety plan in case they are dying or an accident happens to them. Either it is a letter left to their family or a testament where they specify about their bitcoin.

The first thing we need to do before we give our asset in the wallet, we need to make sure that person knows cryptocurrency so he can use the assets. Maybe we can teach that person step by step and ask him to practice, and I am sure it doesn't take too long for that person to understand. And then we need to tells that person always remember for "don't tell other people."
So when we are gone, we can delegate or give our assets to him with a letter about how to use the wallet and what we want that person to do after we die.

you would be surprised how many people actually have no plans about things like that whatsoever. specially those who have a lot of bitcoin worth a lot of money. these people may even be more careful about leaving any kind of trace behind. the latest example was the owner of an exchange (Canadian exchange if I am not mistaken) who passed away and he was the only one controlling the private keys and took them to his grave.

I am sure almost anyone who holds a big amount of bitcoin worth at least a few thousands of dollars have a safety plan in case they are dying or an accident happens to them. Either it is a letter left to their family or a testament where they specify about their bitcoin.