Bitcoin Forum

Please read - Zepher Memorial Thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5114042.0)

Since I read this about Zepher (rest in peace brother) I was having this thought in mind. What if I no longer exist tomorrow? What will happen with my bitcoins (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5101715.msg49401725#msg49401725)? I am a die heart bitcoins hodler. You can call me very optimistic but I really believe that Bitcoin is the future currency system. So my one and only goal is to accumulate as much as I can before the world wakes up. But what if some accident happen with me? Life if very uncertain. So here what I did, despite I have a hardware wallet :

# I created a 2/2 multiSig wallet

# Two sets,
-- First seed, first signers key and 2nd signers key (Set 1)
-- 2nd seed, 2nd signers key and first singers key (Set 2)
I printed 2 copies for each set

# Set 1: Both copies to one of my in laws hand. I told him to keep one copy in his house and another copy in somewhere else, anywhere in a secure place but not in his house

# Set 2: Both copies to one of my sibling with same instruction.

# Told my wife if anything happen with me then seek for these two person.

What is your back up plan?

My family already know my wallets password and my brother knows how to trade since he is also a bounty hunter,
Then I think my crypto's would be just stock in the abyss.
At least they could use the money that I earned.

If I have a good amount of Bitcoin in my possession and I'm all aware that I have a health issue then no question ask I will instruct my immediate family to learn how to open or at least use my Bitcoin wallet so they can take over my wealth when the day comes, or I'll not wait for my last day and simply convert all of my bitcoin to Fiat. The balance of Zepher's Bitcoin address is zero, I guess he did it.

Honestly, I don't have any back plan to whoever can retrieve my bitcoin when I die unexpectedly because I know to myself that I'm strong and healthy enough, there's a huge amount of bitcoins out there that's no longer accessible because of dead owners but I believe that the day will come that there will be a specific department that will do legal issues regarding this matter just like in our real life, it's just a matter of time.

I use both google inactive account manager and deadmansswitch.net ... send a GPG encrypted email to the wife and kids with the private keys and how to redeem / convert to fiat, plus the password to the wallet stored on a USB drive, or the password to an encrypted archive stored on that same USB drive.

They'll figure it out.

I’ve got back up USB keys with my private keys on in very secure locations (not my house).

I don’t have any kids yet so my gf (of 11 years - we are not married) knows where they are if anything happens to me.

She knows the encryption phrases (very long :))

I paint, and I paint a lot. Everybody in the family knows that I got the hand for painting and knows that I'm also in the bitcoin game, so perhaps I might mix those two in the future. Placing a full private key on one of my most favorite work, together with a riddle that they also love to solve. I'm a practical man and I'm not willing to shell out couple of hundreds of dollars on hardware wallets. Sure they keep your funds secure and all but it's still nice to stick to the old methods of paper wallets where it all began. At least, they'll still learn something from me even when I'm long gone.

Here is the thing, My wife does not know any s**t about bitcoin wallet, spending, recovering etc etc LOL. She is educated, smart and employed girl but for some reason crypto is not her cup of tea LOL

Anyway, my brother knows a lot about crypto. So I hope they will figure it out at time.

I have only a girl who is 3 moths old. I wish she finds interest in cryptocurrency 😊

Didnt know this sort of website exists for a contingency plan for those needing one.
Now the question is why didnt the owner of Quadrigacx have the same thing enabled for his wife and now ceo of the company to have knowing he had health issues and going to a country notorious for making people even sicker with the air quality and food allergies? :-\

it's hard to avoid trust in a practical inheritance plan. my wife is a sort of a technophobe. getting her to learn how to use bitcoin just so i can set up a dead man's switch is not only impractical but i don't have faith that she'll remember how to recover the coins.

so my backup plan: my wife has physical access to my cold storage. if/when it ever comes to it, we both trust her younger brother to recover the coins.

i'd like to do a dead man's switch where i don't need to trust anyone but......i hate the idea of something going wrong and my family losing everything when i die. these are people i trust dearly so i'm okay with a trusted setup.

This is something very useful. Like the other use I did not know something like this exist. I think I can use it too.

That's exactly my wife too LOL

That's a long time brother. Get settled and have kids 🙂

My 3 months baby girl is the best thing that happened to me after my lovely wife. Trust me, you will feel the same.

i simply have my seed written down on a piece of paper and that paper is stored safely among my belongings. i also have all of the passwords that i have used for encrypting important stuff (the live Linux on the USB and the Electrum wallet on it)  on paper and they are stored similarly. they don't yet know how to recover it but they are aware that i own bitcoin so it would be easy for them to simply figure it out.

i may add some sort of encryption on my seed and store the encrypted later and store the password separately to increase its security a little bit.

I am on my own, so if I die, my Bitcoins will be vanished from supply, forever. Unless of course, someone can guess the password of private files.

@libert, so you don't have any family? I think it's wiser if you find someone who'll inherit your crypto, if you have any relatives.

Personally I plan to educate my brother, or my wife about crypto and especially how they can liquidate my asset if I ever leave them behind. I hope before that happens I already give them some fiat in reserve which can be used to further invest or do anything that they needs.

reading this thread reminds me how many coins must be lost forever. it seems like many people are planning to make some inheritance setup but haven't yet. and others are simply hoping their family will dig through their belongings and figure it out. these both sound like recipes for lost coins!

maybe those estimates (from chainalysis etc) about 4 million + lost coins aren't so wrong after all! :P

i honestly have never thought about it!
i'll have to think of something though. probably will do it with a hardware wallet but i still can't bring myself to pay money to buy a bitcoin wallet! it sounds strange to me since i can store my coins safely in cold storage already.


they are wrong because they are only estimating based on whether the coins have moved or not. for example i have coins that i have not touched for nearly 4 years. they probably consider them as "lost coins"!

I do not completely understand the technical aspect, and that is the first piece I would love to pass along. The cryptocurrency knowledge. My next of kind would have lots of tools at their disposal to learn more about cryptocurrency, this would better position them for a transition if it becomes necessary.

I am always having a hard time trusting others specially in-laws so your method is never going to work for me. I am not married so I don't have a family yet to give them anything. so far I am only responsible for the coins that I own and I don't think this is going to change any time soon! so in case of my death bitcoin is going to become a little bit more scarce :P

I'm really sorry to read about all these news, I always feel sad when I read about people who pass, and it's so nice to see that even online community and a Bitcoin community can get together to say some words about Zepher.

I never really thought about my Bitcoin and who will receive it when I pass. I want my parents to get it, since I have no one else, but I fear they may never know how to use it. And even worse if I start to do multisig. They will just get lost.

What's the solution for issues like mine?

For now, I don't have a backup plan, but I already save my private keys with the USB in a safe place, and I left one envelope which will give information on where the USB is so my family can search that USB and use it for their life.

My family knew if I am in bitcoin world and I already told them how to use bitcoin, how to sell bitcoin, how to convert bitcoin to cash. So in this step, I don't worry about them.

But later, I think I will think about what next I will do if somehow, I got a heart attack, and I cannot be saved. I think I will hire a lawyer and give a copy of the letter I already made to him and ask him to secure and only give to my family if I died.

I have some issue trusting a person with my private key and stuff but we can say that even the most trusted person close to us can be the one that might have an interest with the amount of money you own, But I never said that all of these things can be a fact about not trusting anyone, But with our kind situation we should have someone even one we need to trust to fully recover everything in our bitcoin wallet, I had my wife and only my wife know my wallets passphrase, And even if she is not literate with cryptocurrency I have a sister that I have taught about cryptocurrency and knows how to convert every coins or token that I have and convert it to Fiat currency when that time comes. I only wish that Zepher had somebody like that who'd taken care of his cryptocurrency or his account for him RIP his good soul,

All of my family members know what cryptocurrency is and one of my parents already invest in bitcoin and ethereum. I also help them to create money by just doing investing. My parents also know that I have ledger wallet but I keep it in my secret place where no can find it.

You need also to trust one of your closest relative to make sure just in case things happen as we are not sure what tomorrow will bring to our life, you have to decide in order to protect your assets there's a need for someone to take care of that for you if worst thing happen, securing assets for next
change trend definitely helps your future,.

Man, I didn't know the man until you mentioned him here. The story is kind of sad though. But I've already secured my funds by telling it to my family. They are the only one who I can trust it with. They are one of the reasons why I am enthusiastic. It's scary to think that the funds we've worked hard will be lost forever if we don't have anyone to tell it to.

At present there is no plan. Everyone I'm related to is already pretty rich so I don't really care about enriching them further. I don't think any of them are competent enough to deal with it all. When something foolproof and secure comes along I may look into it. Even then I won't care. I'll be dead.

I don't have a wife or kids. If I did I'd be so appalled I'd have to use all the funds to have a sex change and disappear.

how do you know they aren't accounting for that already with a probabilistic model? they already know damn well that 100% of unmoved coins aren't lost. we have no idea what their model is but i'm confident it's much more complex than you think.

one of the ways they know that is that hodlers often hodl their bitcoin but sweep out their bcash and other fork coins. have you ever sold your fork coins? then they definitely know your coins aren't lost.

i would be extremely surprised if there weren't at least a few million lost coins. you can plainly see that most people have taken terrible care of their coins for most of bitcoin's history. all the lost or corrupted or overwritten hard drives, all the forgotten passwords! clearly very few people are making plans for when they die, so when they do those coins are lost---over the last 10 years, surely many bitcoin users died. remember that exchange that deleted all its private keys? there are endless possibilities, many of which we already know about. imagine all the cases of lost coins that we don't know about.

I don't have a 'backup' plan yet, and don't think I will ever have the way things are right now. It's easy in my case because I don't have much contact with family to begin with, and those who I do have contact with are doing well themselves.

With time, and more mainstream adoption, the average person will likely have a bank act as custodian, just like how they act as custodian for everyone's money right now. I personally don't like this, but most people aren't capable of handling their own finances, so they always need a custodian and if possible insurance up to x amount.

I'm always amazed by how much people over complicate things as well. Instructions hidden here to encrypted things hidden somewhere else, deadman's switches, instructions in your will, etc.

Here's my back up plan: my wife knows the PINs for our hardware wallets, where the seeds are stored, and how to decrypt them. I sleep in the same bed as my wife, our mortgage is combined, our fiat bank accounts are all combined, our car keys hang on the same hook, etc. If she wanted to steal from me or cause me any harm, accessing our crypto would be the last of my concerns to be honest.

Also to all the people saying "I'm young, I don't need to worry about this", you are incorrect. A simple blow to the head or an unlucky infection could give you enough memory loss to forget how to access your coins. Have a back up plan, now.

It also comes to my mind that if something bad happens then your Bitcoin will be stuck on your wallet so I decided to teach my wife the basics of accessing and withdrawing Bitcoins on my wallet, also I make an instruction on a paper including my privatekey and told her that if somehow she forgot to transfer funds then she should read the paper and seek some help from my friends.

Now that's one I hadn't considered. However if my brain goes I won't really care about anything other than making farting noises and jumping up and down in my bouncer. Perhaps I'd better leave myself a wee clue just in case I make a reasonable recovery.

I work in healthcare, and unfortunately it's something we see regularly. The brain is a very delicate organ, not just in terms of direct physical trauma but also biochemical imbalances. Any patient who ends up in intensive care has somewhere around a 50-66% change of developing what is known as "critical illness delirium" or "ICU delirium", regardless of their initial illness. This essentially causes cognitive dysfunction and memory problems. Issues with sequences and numbers are a very common part of it - patients frequent report having trouble remembering phone numbers, addresses and passwords (and presumably hardware wallet PINs) after they have recovered. You could suffer with anything from a bad infection from a burst appendix, a severe asthma attack, even something as simple as the flu, and end up with memory problems and unable to access your crypto. Everyone thinks "It won't happen to me". Unfortunately it happens to people every day who thought exactly that.

It's one reason why brain wallets are such a bad idea, but if only you know how to access your hardware wallet, then from the "recoverability" point of view you are no better than a brain wallet.

I had thought of this but am waiting for the right time to implement it. What I thought was to keep all my wallets' private keys in an archived password protected zip file.
I would then keep that file on a safe place with 2 backups of it in other places and share the password and file location in the form of a riddle only that person can solve who is close to me.
Obvious that I would phrase the riddle in such a way that the person who is close to me can easily get what am trying to say.

I divide my wallet details and private keys into 4 and gave it each to my family members . I did it such a way that I sharered the division from the back in order of 4,3,2,1. I made a writing in a way that they will have to read it like 5 times before they understand why I wrote in it in how to combine the keys and use it. This can only be done when they come together as a family.