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Topic: Ripple enthusiast with $1 billion in XRP dies - nobody has keys/passwords ! (Read 452 times)

legendary
Activity: 2534
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We have to see both sides of they story, there can be two scenarios here, one is that he just ignored or we can say forgot to share hos passwords and key with his family or the second scenario could be that he intentionally never shared the key, may be he does not want to give his asset to anyone, who knows.
According some reports he was addicted to drugs and maybe that contributed to him neglecting his duties about making a proper will and ensuring his family are financially looked after.


Give them your private keys.
Do you see any other solution? There isn't any.
Either you will give them your private keys or not. Maybe to store them in safe but still they will have to know safe password.
You can give private keys to family but that means they can access your funds during your lifetime.


It's possible that he bought them a long time ago when it was peanuts and never thought it would be worth anything. Hence he didn't bother to tell his family because they wouldn't understand how it worked and it wasn't worth much at the time (relative to his wealth).
Maybe he did buy them when they were very cheap but he must have known their value after all he was according to reports spending huge amounts of money of drugs (though there is no real evidence about that)

If he had $1 billion worth of XRP then at $0.50 each he must have had around 2 billion XRP. The current total XRP circulation as of today 4th June 2018 is 39 billion so that means he alone was holding over 4% of all XRP. Those are staggering numbers if true.
jr. member
Activity: 224
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Matthew Mellon was a man with a reported $1 billion of Ripple (XRP). Sadly he died but nobody from his attorney to his friends to his family are in possession of his keys or passwords to access his crypto:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/62046/ripple-enthusiast-1-billion-xrp-dies-unexpectedly/index.html

What do you think is the best way to ensure you can leave your crypto-assets behind for your family in the event of your death BUT not let anybody have access to those crypto-assets while you are alive?


it's advisable to let your closest people know where you store your wallet or back ups of the wallet. That way they could always access it when something happens to you...
legendary
Activity: 2534
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First of all sympathy for his family members. He must be cleaver enough to store his key in somewhere. A people who invested $1 billion must have stored his key in safe and secret place.

Sometimes people keep saying to themselves "I will do it tomorrow" and never manage to arrange their finances and their wills to protect their investments leaving their family and friends without inheritence.

What happened in this case is sad but it does seem his family do not have access to his crypto private keys
member
Activity: 131
Merit: 10
sadly, there arent many people interested on this. I am sorry for that man, and i am sorry for the family because they did not have the private keys to recover those amounts of money.
legendary
Activity: 2534
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Yeah it's definitely sad but also very interesting in the sense how it might affect XRP or the crypto market.

Will be carefully watching, this is still very interesting regardless of everything else.

If somebody has $1 billion locked in XRP I doubt that will affect the market because there are so many Bitcoin and altcoin zombie wallets out there and that never seems to affect their price.

sr. member
Activity: 1932
Merit: 300
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Is it wise to provide your private key to your partner or family. Or at least let them know how to retrive them.
But most of us think that we are not going to die yet but that can be wrong anytime.
sr. member
Activity: 1008
Merit: 355


This is a very interesting story and though this is a very serious concern the thing is that we normally don't expect that something will happen to us so we just put this aside until an unfortunate or the unexpected came through. There is a strong possibility that this asset will just go to waste as if also it died along with the rightful owner and heirs may not be able to recover it unless he made a way to leave the keys to the account. If I remember right there was a project or two focusing on this very topic...making sure that heir can have access in case something will happen (death) to the owner of the coin or token.
full member
Activity: 364
Merit: 101
This is just sad. He worked his way to get that millions but he died without having to leave it to his family. I may not have much to give to my family but i made sure incase i die, i would share to them what i worked hard for. All my private keys are written in what i call my blue book. Everything is in there. How to cash it, how to continue trade it if they want to. I made sure i have it and when i die they will be able to make use of it.
member
Activity: 686
Merit: 39
My condolences to his family.
$1 billion in XRP is like 5% of total market cap  Shocked
I already anticipated if this case happened to me by telling my pv keys to my mother and she has promised not to do anything to my pv keys until i the day i die.
full member
Activity: 1050
Merit: 149
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Damn. This is sad news and may his soul rest in peace. If he never left any keys or passwords, that money could be lost forever. I highly doubt this is the case though since a man who could earn so much money in his life must be very smart and he would have backed up his keys and passwords in some way or another. The family needs to check everything thoroughly and make sure the wrong people don't get their hands on it.
newbie
Activity: 168
Merit: 0
Looks like we should now prepare for this possibility, because we never know what will happen.
I mean this is completely different from the bank deposit or any document that can be accessed by our family in certain situations.
newbie
Activity: 196
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very sad when reading this news, it's a lot of money and that person can not leave his money to his family, I am also sad that their families do not know and can not access that much money, it is a lesson for people who have a lot of money and keep it in the form of investment crypto, that we must tell access to people we can trust.
newbie
Activity: 154
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I have prepared for this situation. I printed it and kept it where my wife should find it. I think this is very important, because even a person can lose his laptop at any time and if you just store data in one place, then it gets worse.
newbie
Activity: 168
Merit: 0
That is one of the advantages of crypto, which can make it weakness at the same time.
I think making a copy on paper and putting it on a will, or telling people we believe will solve this kind of problem.
legendary
Activity: 2534
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I am not sure if ripple is available to do Lock Time transactions? I find this to be the easiest way as you make transaction to other party you trust with your coins in it lets say you put it for next year. When date is coming close you simply pick your stash of coins and move it to another address before lock time transaction triggers itself so you go and make another one. I found this to be the effective way to ensure your money is not lost. It is sad to see that people haven't though about this because as we know everybody can die tomorrow unexpectedly.

Sounds impractical to do when the purpose is to keep the private keys away from people.
legendary
Activity: 2534
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This is such a sad news to here, he was a young guy. I think that the best way to prevent this from happening is to store your crypto assets on an offline device( Like Trezor, or Ledger) and keep the paper with the seed in a location where your family will know about(you can inform your lawyer about it) in case such an unfortunate event happens to you.

I do not know, this news cause like RIP or promote ripple by confirming there will be demand always for ripple for long days. I am not sure how to take this news mate. There is section on this forum to write news article on the forum called press.
Better you could move your thread to thread. Whatever happened centralized coins will not help the other fellow crypto earners.

Thank you for your post. Mods will move any thread to the location they think best.
sr. member
Activity: 602
Merit: 259
That wont really matter! Know why?

Ripple is the currency with non ending emission of this coin. Its in complete authority of the Ripple company itself and thus it wont be hard for this compant to generate all new coins equivalent to the coins that were stuck due to that tragedy. Those coins anyway are locked out forever now and there is no way to recover them, not even ripple themselves can do that due to irreversible mechanism of the blockchain! So it wont affect the market at all, XRP will continue just the normal way.
legendary
Activity: 2534
Merit: 1713
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Yeah, at least with the way things are, and even for the fact that even if you are not going to be trusting your attorney or anyone around you to hold your private key, one can generate a paper wallet or get a cold storage to put the funds in a bank to store just the way people store gold in banks. In that way, anyone can make it accessible to their next of kin in the case where they are deceased or simply write a will to let them know there is something left for them as inheritance somehow. What a waste right now! $1 billion ?

Yes it is a waste of $1 Billion, sadly.

I disagree with you when you say you could get a paper wallet or cold storage and put it in a safety deposit box at a bank. Your funds are only secure as long as nobody has your key. If they are written on paper and stored in a box at a remote location then I do not class them as safe and secure.

Something else needs to be done, a better way to secure the keys yet making them accessible to those in your will when death occurs.
hero member
Activity: 1148
Merit: 527
Matthew Mellon was a man with a reported $1 billion of Ripple (XRP). Sadly he died but nobody from his attorney to his friends to his family are in possession of his keys or passwords to access his crypto:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/62046/ripple-enthusiast-1-billion-xrp-dies-unexpectedly/index.html

What do you think is the best way to ensure you can leave your crypto-assets behind for your family in the event of your death BUT not let anybody have access to those crypto-assets while you are alive?
One of the disadvantages so far! What is the point holding $1billion worth of ripple and it all ended up in drain with no one to access it? That is crazy! It is high time people started picturing themselves in the aspect where they may not actually be there to spend their digital currency in the long run and at least find a way to transfer the wealth once they are gone. It is really terrible and saddening to see all that go to waste.
legendary
Activity: 2534
Merit: 1713
Top Crypto Casino
This is such a sad news to here, he was a young guy. I think that the best way to prevent this from happening is to store your crypto assets on an offline device( Like Trezor, or Ledger) and keep the paper with the seed in a location where your family will know about(you can inform your lawyer about it) in case such an unfortunate event happens to you.

Yes first and foremost it is sad news a man died, he had a young family and our thoughts should be with them.

Personally I would not leave my crypto keys with a lawyer because it means they are not 100% secure and safe.
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