Topic: What happens to the coins after your death ? - page 12. (Read 2446 times)

There are many threads that discusses about the coins we hold after our demise and the most legit one is that you can write a Last Will or Testament with the help of a lawyer so that all the coins reaches our family after our demise and with the pandemic situation it is a necessary that we should do these if you are holding huge amount of money in cryptocurrency as you never know what happens in the future even if you are healthy and young.

Considering my lifestyle, I hope to live for long years. But, we we should always think about any situation. A year ago I said my sister, mother and my girlfriend about my fund and how I invest. So, they know what I do and they can use all the assets I invest. Also, I wrote all my recovery codes on a peace of paper and I did put the paper in a super safe location. In that paper I write some words for my family and I did advice them to use the coins for a good purpose such as donating for poor children. However, I'm not sure if they will even find the find the paper or not. However, some other people may want their assets to be buried and inaccessible after their death.

This is something weird to think about LOL. I have my hardware wallet and a metal with my seed key. I'm trying to teach my family how to use this. Apart from that, I have written some direction on a paper with the metal. I believe if I'm not here, they will be able to recover my coin.

If you die and nobody knows your password, you'll become the eternal hodler.

Since the coins you originally owned will never ever move again, they won't be sold on the exchanges which means the other people that control their coins will potentially benefit from your sacrifice by having higher bitcoin prices.

How many people will do it this way. For me no, if I had children, I would give them 12 keywords and write down my will in a sealed safe.
the rest, no one wants, it will be put into a chain called coffin burn forever. Lol

This is where establishing a will comes in to play.  You can write up a will, have it stored in a safe place and require it to only be viewed upon your passing, which is all stuff you can set up through lawyers.  It's important that you make sure a couple people are aware of these plans, just in case you were to tragically pass with the only other person or persons who know about what you have going on in terms of your Will.  I created a topic about this a few years ago I would highly suggest reading- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50703294

They have even written books about this very topic  - https://www.amazon.com/Cryptoasset-Inheritance-Planning-Simple-Owners/dp/1947910116/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?keywords=estate+planning+bitcoin&qid=1555850417&s=gateway&sr=8-5

This question has been raised before and the answer stays the same: it's good as dead assuming that you kept your private keys to yourself.

Our BTCs are stored in our wallets that are protected with our respective private keys. In the unfortunate event that you die, no one will be able to access your wallet without which knowing the private keys; that is why it is somehow advisable to create a safe-lock containing all of your essential items/documents for your heirs to manage.

My habit is that I usually don't tell anyone my password or keys, I just write some important things in my diary and maybe when I die. No one knows of its existence. Because of everything I do or any secrecy about the coin, I am very careful and careful not to want anyone to invade my privacy. I just like to be alone and independently

Absolutely not. Any such system would by definition mean that through the consensus of a number of third parties - the developers, in this case - anybody's coins could be moved or withdrawn without the consent of that person. If you do that, then you destroyed the very essence of what bitcoin is by requiring complete trust in a number of third parties. If you want a third party to be able to move your money, then go use a fiat bank.

I always find it pretty sad when people on here talk about how they can't trust their partner with knowledge of their seed phrase, in case their partner steals all their money. You are in a committed relationship with this person, but you can't trust them not to clear you out and leave at the first chance they get? You've got bigger problems then figuring out how to leave your bitcoin to someone after you die.

What if that unfortunate event leaves you incapacitated or dead. Saying to him "I'll tell you later how to access them" is useless. You need a plan in place now.

After you die and you don't share your private key and your password with any of your family I believe nobody will be able to access your wallet after your death which is very bad and if you tell them your private key they will definitely miss use it so the only thing I believe is the best thing to do is to make sure you have a diary where you write all your password and your private key which after your death they can easily see it and your coins won't just be in your wallet.

When you die your bitcoins die with you  This decreases the supply hence making bitcoin more valuable.
The only way anybody else would be able to access your bitcoins would be if hackers find a way to access your device where you stored bitcoins or if some way to access your keys.
Also, if you are willingly letting your acquaintance to access your keys then they will get the custody of your bitcoins.
For now I have just said my brother that I am holding cryptocurrencies and I am planning to letting him know how to access my coins in case of any unfortunate event.
In future though, if I get the benefit to accumulate more coins then I am planning to somehow give it back to the community.

Yeah I know, its not really ideal, just one of the options.


True, that's a better way. For me personally just giving seed phrase to my wife and parents works fine, but I know that not everyone can trust theirs (which sucks I might add). My wife asked me (half joking lol ) do I trust her with seed phrase, to which I told her that I would divorce her already if I don't trust her with something like money.

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But what if something happens to the hard drive? Just few months ago my SSD stopped working after only couple of years, thank God I didn't have any important data there and I don't wanna even think about what would happen if I had something as sensitive as wallet keys stored there. Sure, you can restore some data, but its a major pain in the ass and AFAIK you can't retrieve 100% of the data.

My point is, you might wanna consider saving those keys someplace else as well, just in case.

My better half knows all my wallet keys since then and vice versa so I believe that my coins are safe no matter what happens. We're starting to teach our daughter things about crypto so she'll also have an access to it in the future. We must have at least a single and trusted person to share our wallet keys with because we don't know the possible things that could happen in the future.

It is one of the most frequently asked question in the forum and I think bitcoin or crypto developers would find or make a way on how this can be solved. A sudden death can make your coins go to waste so it would be best that you have some back up files left to your family so that they can access your earnings if ever you die accidentally or unexpectedly. I just hope the developers can make some kind of memorialized option for those who encountered unexpected death wherein through legal documents revealing the relation of a certain family member, they can access the account or withdraw to make use of it.

I have my wallet keys saved on my hard drive and my son and wife have the password to my hard drive but are only permitted to use it on my instructions or when am not accessible to use it. This has helped me to secure my coins, I can't afford to risk my digital assets so I let my family have access to my keys and passwords.

Thanks for this one, I'm a bit curious about this too although I have no use with it because I am pretty sure that I won't be needing to do this when the time comes, I just like to have a good read.

You're certain? There's no way that someone might glance at it in a filling cabinet somewhere? Or that it might get scanned and uploaded to server, and someone might take a look at it? Or when you are updating your Will that an intern somewhere might be handed the old copy to shred? I would never hand over your seed phrase or keys in plain text to a third party, regardless of how reputable they are or what processes you think are in place. Things go wrong and things slip through the cracks all the time.

What I have outlined above - encrypted seed phrase with heirs, decryption key with lawyers or other trusted third party. Alternatively, a time locked transaction. I set up a transaction moving all the coins in my cold storage to my heir's address, but timelock it so it cannot be broadcast before block 741,000 - roughly one year from now. I hand this transaction over to my heir. Once we hit block 741,000, they can broadcast it and claim all my coins. If I am still alive, then at some point prior to block 741,000 I move all the coins in my cold storage to a new address, thereby invalidating the timelocked transaction they are holding, and provide them with a new timelocked transaction, this one unable to be spent prior to block 795,000, roughly another year on. Timelock can also be performed with Unix time if you want to be exact and don't want to depend on the variability of the average block time.

I think on the legal side the most reasonable and best solution is to leave all the information in the will with the lawyer.
After your death, the lawyer acts based on your instructions in the will and gives the selected person all instructions on how to access your crypto wallet.
Such information is stored in a secure place in the legal system and is not accessed by anyone until the start of the legal process.
I think this is the best and safest way to solve this problem.
Of course, it is much easier to choose a family member right now and give him all the information to access your crypto wallet.
If you don’t trust your family, who will you trust? 
There is no alternative to these 2 solutions, it is likely that crypto funds will be lost after your death.
It is easy to criticize both solutions but what then do you suggest as an alternative?

It's a good idea, but I don't like the way it is set up. Having a centralized service store your encrypted message, which will presumably be your seed phrase, and handing out the decryption key to your family and friends is the wrong way to do things. You are still trusting the service in question to properly encrypt your message, to securely store that message, and not to have the unencrypted message stolen by other malware or attacks on your computer. Very few people will choose a decryption key with 128 bits of security, meaning the security of your seed phrase will be reduced the whatever the security of your password is.

Much better to give your family and friends your encrypted seed phrase, and have a third party service store and email out the decryption key.

Again, you are now trusting a third party with complete access to your coins if you hand over your keys or seed phrase in plain text. Better to give your family members your encrypted seed phrase and store the decryption key with your lawyers.

After all, how could someone very close to not care, do not want to understand or even to be untrustworthy, I don't think that's possible, of course he/she will be good responsive to you, here you just need to teach him/her until he/she really understands and wants to hold on to trust.