Topic: My aunt's daughter Died and there is 13 btc in hardwear wallet (Read 646 times)

This quote right here is really strange. Who would have thought that you are giving a tutorial of buying coins and didn't know anything about btc? *facepalm*


It's really funny though. Maybe they didn't notice it because they focus on the 13 btc sitting on the ledger or they just didn't know the "C" word LOL

Nobody is going to use the word cousin in this thread? Really?

Before I talk or say something else, condolence to your aunt and in your family.

As far I know a Nano legder is one the most secure wallet when it comes to storing crypto currencies especially for the big amount of currencies that you have that's why it would recommend for those individuals to use this. So if you are willing to open it you can look for a good process to open a ledger wallet or you can also ask some people who have this kind of wallet and get some opinions on how to open in it.

It is so sad that your this member of your family died so young and now leaves behind children. You showed her how to buy bitcoin and she bought 13?? Wow ok. Where is her backup? You must print out or write out the privatekey on paper somewhere, so where is that place? IF she didn't do that, then I think they maybe lost. Just the pin number to the nano is difficult to get. Then you still need the ledger wallet password.


I would like to look a tthis as an oppertunity to explain a few things to people so this sort of thing never happens again. Please listen to me and do as I say and then you can have peace of mind if the worse happens you have a relaible and safe backup.

Backup everything. Privatekey, Pin and any other method back it up.

Print the backup at least 3x and hide 1 in your room somewhere you will not forget, maybe between a book in the back of the cupboard or something.
You should make a seal for the piece of paper with the privatekey so you can tell if it has been tampered with.
You can also make QR codes for this info like the private key. Use the QR software offline and disconnected from the internet.
Hide another printed out piece of tamper-proof paper and put it in the safe.
Take your final piece of paper and file it among your work stuff which should be private safe and secure to begin with.

Printout 1 more backups and give them to a family member to put in their safe.

You now have 4 backups. 3 internal and one external at your family members house. 2 are in safes. 2 more are printed out just incase though if you feel ok with it you can just use the one in the safe.
I personally use a ledger and have 3x backups at home in the places I described. My family will know how to work out how to withdraw the bitcoin to another address if I die since my mother knows the location to the backups. The obvious place would be the safe in which I have a backup too.

Last bit of advice. Never back your private key up online. Always do it offline. Never ever keep your backups on your pc. (keeping backups for hotwallets is perfectly fine though,I keep a hotwallet with a few 100 $$ in for spending.) Treat your ledger as your bank account basically, because it is.

Someone should know about this, or there should be some printed back-up in the vault or else the money will totally be gone. We should trust our family and never keep it as a secret because all the hard work you’ve gave in this market the result is for your family. 13BTC is a huge coin, find a way to find the key and remember all the things about your Aunt.

As long as there is nano ledger and recovery phrase, then it's possible for you to access and transfer the BTC out. If you can access her laptop, nano, recovery phrase, personal details and wallet details, it will be easier to do. Then you also need her pin. Check her birthday and other things that may give away her pin details and use. I wish you good luck

The seek of PIN for that ledger nano begins which is the main thing needed to access that hardware wallet and pull out those btc funds since you had mentioned that you know nothing about btc then if you do successfully find out the pin and open the wallet.It would be better on reading up the basics of btc transactions/transfers and reading up some article on how to cash em out to fiat.It sounds pretty basic but
if you do mess up on these basic steps you would potentially lost those bitcoins forever and waste up $94k. My condolences btw.

Accept my condolences

I should think that's the first thing to say when someone is bereaved before we start proffering ways of unlocking the wallet, right? Or don't we trust the story? Well, OP you have been given great suggestions already on how to recover the coins. Good luck.

They're not getting in if he doesn't have recovery words or know how long the pin is.

Join (the "Church" or whatever of  bitcoin)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-churchcall-it-whatever-you-want-of-bitcoin-5141757
WE DO NOT PAY TAX ON OUR BTC, OTHER THAN THE MINERS TX

1. Like any other say, look the backup passphrase for that ledger. Maybe she just writes it and put it in something save.
2. Try the pin several times, like her birthday or any special dates she likes.
3. If you found it and you in the US good luck with taxes.

Anyway sorry for the lost. life is not something we can predict, but have some saving in bitcoin without any members of your family knows is not good at all.

to open it you need to know the pin code especially people in crypto write their pin or password somewhere like notebook
you just need to look for it but ususally for pin people tend to use special date like birthday, child birthday anniversary

First of all, Sorry for your Loss!

What you can try is to search through her PC looking for document types like .txt, .doc, .docx. The most common document extensions. If she saved her seed phrase anywhere on here pc it is likely that she did it in either Word or Notepad.

On Windows 10 you open 'My Computer'.
In the right upper corner you have a search field. Click on that.
Now click on 'Search Tools' which is now available in the menu.
In the 'Type' drop down menu select 'Document'.

The PC should now start a search looking for all known document extensions including .txt .doc etc.
Let it search and after it is done look through the results in search for anything that might look like a word list - those are the seed words.

After you are done with that, check if she has any USB sticks around and check her emails.

aunt's daughter as in cousin?

Sadly, yes... there have been numerous instances of people who did stupid things like email themselves their wallet seed mnemonics as a backup... or write the phrase in a text document... or take pictures on their phones of seed phrases displayed onscreen etc. A lot of people just don't seem to comprehend how easy it is to "lose" crypto...

I would certainly look for the recovery card or a list of 24 words in papers/notebooks etc... but I would definitely be searching through the laptop as well.

She probably saved the passwords on her own computer. Look for him first. Search her emails. Try to find at least some Ledger addresses. If it does indeed have 13Btc, you can seek professional help. They can offer you several ways to recover your wallet by earning only a% after opening it.

Trezor has the exponential time delay, not Ledger. With a Ledger, after 3 incorrect PIN attempts, the device actually wipes itself.

To recover coins from the Ledger Nano S, you need either:
1. The device AND the PIN number. Having the physical device without knowledge of the PIN is effectively useless.
or
2. The 24 word seed mnemonic

My advice would be to search the laptop and all of the Aunts physical papers/documents for the 24 word seed mnemonic. Hopefully she used the official recovery card that looks like this:


That will make it easier to recognise. Otherwise, she might stored them in a document stored on the laptop.

Although it is not clear here what OP have or not have, in case they can find 24 seed words, only correct way to accces that wallet is to enter wrong PIN three times in a row, and Nano S will be reseted to factory settings. All this is necessary only if the correct PIN can not be found. This is in this or that way connected to hardware wallet, so there is no need to make confusion with any other wallet.

In any case, the deceased person is probably make some backups, it may take time for something like that to be found.

Whatever you do, you should have a professional guide you through the different steps involved.

First, if you just hit random pin code tries as some people suggested, you will be locked out from the Ledger as it has built in security, after a few wrong tries the time for you to be allowed to enter the pin again with increase exponentially.

Second, the moment you sell and move the funds, (we are talking over around 100k) you would need to know that you have to pay tax in your jurisdiction, depending on the time of purchase and location of your jurisdiction. Knowing that you should be aware that in some cases the tax could be up to 40% of profit made.

Finally, there are several ways to access the funds from the ledger, and whatever you do, dont use any online services, as you can be scammed or fooled to enter information that later can be used to extract and steal the funds.

You should download the official ledger connect software from https://www.ledger.com/ that will help you access the funds. The only way to access it is if you have the pin.

If you dont have the pin, but instead a 12 or 24 word list, you can use that on many different wallets, of which one is Electrum. You can download it from http://electrum.org/#download

In order to "cash" out the funds, you should setup an account on a exchange, depending on your jurisdiction coinbase (US), bitstamp (EU) or binance (Asia).

Also, the ledger could hold funds that doesnt always show up in the software, you would need to use tools like etherscan.io or blockchain.com to see if it holds other coins like Bitcoin Cash or airdrops.

good luck and dont get scammed
/KX
 

You are advising him to the wallet and forgetting that there should be a last will that will give them the right to do so and share the coins. None of you have the right to use her bitcoins just like that. There are procedures for everything and if the children are underage their legal guardian should manage the wallet.

When you get the legal documents you can message the manufacturer and ask them if they are able to tap into the wallet somehow and recover the coins for a fee.