Bitcoin Forum

QuadrigaCX declares bankruptcy after founder dies and private keys lost

Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange — at least until recently — has filed for bankruptcy. QuadrigaCX announced on its website that it had filed for protection under Canadian credit protection laws.
The company started to run into problems about a year ago when bank CIBC froze several accounts belonging to its payment processor Costodian Inc and its owner Jose Reyes. Customers began to report problems withdrawing cash afterwards.
Then it really gets weird.

Read more : https://paperblockchain.com/canadas-largest-cryptocurrency-exchange-goes-bust/ (https://paperblockchain.com/canadas-largest-cryptocurrency-exchange-goes-bust/)

Needless to say, it is important to back up the private keys and if you have a business to make sure that your business partners can access them in the event of an emergency!

There is another option

And it should have been implemented in Bitcoin long ago. Basically, we need a sort of smart contract done either as a second layer solution or right in the blockchain protocol. For example, to prevent such cases from occurring, you would create a smart contract that should send bitcoins from your wallet to another wallet in case you don't prolong this contract, say, in a month or so (something like "a dead hand"). In this way, if you die, lose private keys or whatever, your bitcoins won't be lost but instead will be legitimately transferred after a specified amount of time

This could have been done with their ethereum supply, or even in cold storage without a smart contract where the safe has a time delay lock. Nothing wrong with old school security as long as it works

Here is the flip side of the coin. Cryptocurrency encryption becomes not only a virtue, but also a lack of cryptocurrency. If at the same time we think about it, at least a part of our funds in cryptocurrency would be lost, if we died now, practically each of us would answer in the affirmative. It is easy to give advice from the outside, and we ourselves will always be unprepared for our own death.

This is a great idea. Is there any development focusing on this matter? Or is this still an idea at the moment?
But I'm not sure if Bitcoin would be able to support this, it should require more complex script, isn't it?

There's no reason to do it at the protocol level. Dead man's switches for Bitcoin inheritance have been a topic of discussion for years. Here's one interesting approach to the problem. (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/hackathon-winner-can-help-pass-your-bitcoins-after-you-die/)

The simplest way to do it is to use nLockTime: Make a transaction that pays your inheritors in the future and reveal it to them, then periodically spend those coins before the timelock triggers (every 6 months or something). Rinse, repeat. When you die, the coins will finally be transferred to your inheritors.