Topic: Upon the death of a bitcoin user. - page 3. (Read 1246 times)

Not going into the trust/dont trust the spouse debate, but I feel LoyceV's system is pretty good or you can just teach your family members how to access and use a bitcoin wallet right away so by the time you are old enough, you can easily pass on your money to their wallets and rest easy.

I dont see much issue here, just that we have to do most of this on our own unlike in banks where there are nominees.

And please stop with the "I dont trust my wife" debate, its offtopic.

OP, your assets are  transferable to your next of kin if you wish to.  As a smart investor, wisdom demands that you have a particular person that you are confident in to take control of your assets. Just like the traditional pattern or method where a will is written for a transfer of inheritance, the same is applicable here if you want it so. You can save your keys somewhere accessible after you are no more, but they should be kept confidential so as not to raise an alarm for a man hunt by your children or loved ones.

With respect to a manager taking over your assets when you are no more, it depends if he or she has an idea what is inside the safe where you have kept it, but you should let your lawyer know what you did if you can trust and confine in your lawyer to help protect such sensitive information  for yourself.

Cypherock is about to launch an "Estate Recovery" feature for their X1 hardware wallet that they claim solves the problem of non-custodial inheritance. It uses Shamir backup to split the key backup into 5 parts kept on 5 separate cards, any 2 of which can sign transactions.  You give 1 of those cards to the beneficiary (or 1 each to the beneficiaries--you can distribute separate wallets to multiple people) and use the wallet desktop client to create an encrypted message that includes the location of one (or more) of the other 4 cards, then upload the encrypted message to the cypherock server. Then Cypherock begins emailing you at regular intervals (you can choose the frequency), and if you don't respond to an email for 30 days they email the encrypted message to the beneficiary, which they're able to decrypt with their card. That gives them the location of the second card, which they can retrieve, then use with the first card to access the crypto.

That summary leaves out some details, but there's a description of how it works on their blog at https://www.cypherock.com/blogs/cypherock-cover

Of course no system is ever 100% secure/private, but this one could be effective in some cases, at least for as long as the company stays in business. If their servers shut down before you die, hopefully there will be more options by then!

I would say open a safety box with a reputable bank in your name, best the same bank where you have your bank account. Create a folder with detailed instructions about Bitcoin and the details needed to access your Bitcoins and place it in the safety box.

So in case of your demise whoeever will inherit your stuff will likely get access to this safety box too and has all information to use the Bitcoins.

In case your "family" decides to go to war about who gets how much of your Bitcoins that will not bother you in your grave. At least your Bitcoins are not completely lost and you don"t need to tell anyone about them before your die....

In the case of the deceased in the country where I live, the banks in that country are regulated and as per the government law - if the account holder has a nominee in the account of a bank or financial institution, then that nominee can withdraw the money from the bank and the nominated nominee of the deceased will own the money. But according to the current law the heirs of the deceased will get the money equally.
 Many of us who work with Bitcoin are worried about what will happen to their Bitcoin. I think the closest family members are your parents, wife and children. Yes it is true that we can die at any moment, so to protect your Bitcoins must give proper knowledge about Bitcoin matters to someone in your family. If you die, later family members can use  your bitcoins. I don't think it would be a bad decision to tell your family about Bitcoin.

If nobody knows your wallet password and private keys, the Bitcoins in your wallet will stay there forever(unless someone hacks the wallet, which is highly unlikely to happen). I don't recommend sharing your wallet info with your relatives. They might reveal this information to somebody, who has bad intentions. Perhaps the best option would be to sell a part of those BTC for fiat money and buy life insurance for yourself.
The bank manager story seems weird to me. A bank manager cannot have access to the bank accounts of anyone. I hope that the relatives and heirs of those dead account owners will sue the bank manager for a hefty amount of money.

Do not trust anyone accept parents and spouse. In some cases , even spouse betrays trust after death so still that is not 100% full proof.

   There is no how, you must have one or two trusted persons that is secretive which you can rely on for your Bitcoin WILL people you know can never disappoint you,but stand firm by you and your family when you are no more.

I mean, if you have some asset, it doesn't matter whether it's bitcoin, stocks, gold, you name it, and you don't tell anyone you have it and then you die, whose fault is it? You should always leave some instructions if you don't want to tell your family what you own while you're alive. Prepare a document, a will, whatever you want, explaining what you own and how to retrieve it without being scammed.

That's true.

Even if we've got close friends, the immediate family should be the priority. I don't know how your family affairs is but at the end of the day, they're the closest relative that you can lean on.

Whether they're going to enjoy your wealth or not as long as it's not going to someone else who's randomly checking you. But at least with them, you're in the close bloodline.

It's normal that you are worried about what will happen to my bitcoins but in my opinion you work in bitcoins definitely your closest in your family may be your children your brother wife someone you should inform about bitcoins someone you trust there is no guarantee of human life any  Whatever happens in time, you can alternatively give someone in your family a minimal understanding of Bitcoin so that they can manage Bitcoin in your absence. But if you can tell someone in your family about Bitcoin then surely they can work well in Bitcoin in your generation so there is nothing to be disappointed. Of course you have to prepare in advance that if you are not about Bitcoin then your next generation will be able to carry Bitcoin forward.

One should share his financial matters with someone in family as it is necessary that if he forget about his investment and keys then another person will help him to memorise personal information.

If someone is not sharing about bitcoin investment with others then it means that he Don't want to talk about his wealth with others so there is no right of others to get access to bitcoin after the holder's death.

If bitcoin holder dies without sharing keys and information with others then nobody will be able to take benefit from such investment and that bitcoin will be lost and will never recover back.

But how it should be done? This would really be the primary problem that you would be having in mind as a Bitcoin holder or even holding some altcoins on your portfolio which is really that tends to be hold up for long term.

If you do really try to read up on some people comments that they cant really just that able to trust up their wife when it comes to this manner on which they would really be having that hesitance that those coins
would really be accessed in due time or simply not on the right time since they've been aware or wary about into those stuffs that you've been saving up. This is why there would really be individuals who would really be
keeping it as a secret as much as they could because they do know the risks on having that unpermitted kind of access.

Once private keys been exposed then we do know that anyone could really be able to access such wallet and if this one is really that intented for future holds then this is something
that brings out that potential danger.

This kind of discussion has some time in the past discussed something relating to this topic,  In fact, this is something necessary for every Bitcoiner to make provision of how our wealth in Bitcoin would be, should we have a case of death of the Holder because it's certain that no one would live forever, so letting one of your close confidants' wife, daughter, son, brother, sister and just to mention a few know of your Bitcoin holdings and how to get access to it in a situation like this is something that needs to be done.

Various access to loved ones, this is the first I did with my wife.
Even he knows the key code of my smartphone everything.

I just need to educate how to use it.
I've even made a note of what needs to be opened, and it's very important to do.

We will not know when we will die, in easy age or old age, it is still God's secret.
But creating a crypto record or legacy that must certainly be known to the people we care about is necessary to do.
Sometimes people are too skeptical, never trust anyone so that the crypto assets he collects cannot be opened and will never be able to.

In case of banks, you can make an inheritance letter, so that the bank knows who to contact and who gets your assets. In case of Bitcoin, you'd normally be storing your coins in a non-custodial wallet, so there's nobody to notify to make those arrangements (centralized storage may offer inheritance services, but centralized storage of Bitcoin is generally frowned upon here). I believe that making personal arrangements is a good idea. That can be a scheduled message that you reschedule if you say alive, or simply sharing access with someone you love and trust.

You can literally pass on the seed phrases in your will and make sure you tell your relative(s) where it is.

On-chain passing-the-torch style transactions are also possible as others pointed out, but you want your dead man's switch to be failsafe and work properly the first time.

In case where the Bitcoin holder dies, no one can move his holdings unless he entrusted the private key to other people he trusted.  Unlike you story about bank manager who are able to move a dormant account's asset, no one can access a person's Bitcoin holdings if no one knew about the seed phrase or private key of the said wallet address.

So if you are worry about your family not enjoying the wealth you accumulated in a form of BT @OP,  It is better to be prepared and leave hints and clues on how to access your wealth when you are gone, if you do not want them to know about it when you are alive.  It is a bit complicated but for your plan to work you need to trust some people.  It is the risk that is needed so that  Bitcoin wealth will not go to waste and become idle in the system when unexpectedly the owner of the said holdings dies.


Yeah, the person who should know must be one of the immediate family, it is better to trust people within a family than people outside the family where the possibility of stealing the Bitcoin entrusted to them is highly possible.

None is actually safe between keeping your wallet details to yourself and telling someone who will claim your investment in case of death. You cannot be sure that the person you are giving out your private information about your Bitcoin wallet and other investments is 100% trustworthy. If what becomes of your investment after death bothers you so much,  then disclose this details to someone or even two persons so they can claim your investments incase of death.


This is just the perfect idea. Imagine your family suffering when there is wealth somewhere no one knows how to access.  Rather than let the Bitcoins waste , it is better family members claim them and this is why one or two trusted persons should be given the necessary information. Diclosing your wallet details to third parties is a risk but it is still necessary to plan for death too.

       When it's a situation like that and you're the one in that situation where you don't want to end up doing nothing for the family that's important to you, you should tell at least one of those private things that you haven't told him just in case the opportunity comes that something unexpected happens to you, especially if you know that you have a large total asset of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies that also have a good value in the market similar to that of Bitcoin.

      Because if you don't do this, those who have worked hard for several years in this field of the business industry will just be buried in the pit. I really intend to tell my wife what I am doing by holding crypto assets that I am saving for her and my son's future.