Bitcoin Forum

This is something I have wanted to post about for quite some time. With my career being in finance this kind of stuff is always forefront in my mind.  Sadly with the recent loss of one of our own..it was a brutal reminder how short and unexpected life can be and how important being prepared is.

Writing up a Will is mostly pretty easy and painless, and most often does not require a lawyer to establish (unless your estate is crazy BTC Moon status, then..have a pro set it up). Here’s an easy guide to establishing a Will (https://info.legalzoom.com/write-own-will-4007.html).

Why establish a Will? First off, to avoid probate. Die without a Will and the liquidation of your estate will be handled by the court system.  It’s timely, costly, and not how you want your estate handled at death!!  Also, and my main reason for posting this here, we have a very unusual hobby.  How many people do you know outside of here who knows what a Casascius coin is, how to value it, and where to sell it? Probably VERY few, if any. I have established a special section in my Will on how to liquidate my crypto coin collection.  I have two people that I highly trust listed in my Will as contacts to help sell my collection if I were to pass.

I have been told by 2-3 other regulars here that they’ve already done just this.  For those who haven’t, don’t put it off any longer. Be prepared overall, not just for collectibles, but for things like your wallets/addresses/seeds etc.

Disclaimer- This is written from a U.S. perspective. Those outside Murica should do some homework to make sure you’re doing it correctly/legally.  States in the US have some varying rules, so I’d research that as well.

I am going to have one or two of my legal buddies look this over to make sure I’m not missing anything..just FYI. If there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask!

It's definitely a complicated topic and finding an accurate valuation of a whole collection can be difficult. Plus you have to properly classify all the coins, the difference in prices between an error/non-error coin can be staggering and easily overlooked by someone who is unfamiliar with them. I'm not a 100% sure, but I think in the UK you need a solicitor to witness a will before it is valid. I really need to start looking into this properly..

Great topic Ty!

Came across this book thru a friend awhile back that am sure will answer a few questions

Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning: A Simple Guide for Owners (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)

Edit: added photo

                     https://talkimg.com/images/2024/03/01/fcCgN.png

Thanks for sharing this Krogo. I am surprised to even see this was made, but it goes to show how important this is. I am on my soap box w/this one...but I care about everyone's well being and it's part of the reason I got in to the financial industry, to help my friends out.

Interesting topic.  I keep hearing stories of key people dying and the private keys are lost forever.  That is tricky to manage- how to pass those to loved ones who think bitcoin is a what a misguided dog does.

Yes, good thinking.
It will pay off to be well prepared when the time comes.

Maybe you can have a look at the questions I asked myself and the answers I have found from the community.

[Postmortem crypto plan]: making sure my wife will know what to do! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5093345.msg50098205#msg50098205)

Decent thread. Has been on my mind not long ago as well. However, I'm more annoyed by the lack of widespread availability of proper dead man's switches. A will is not going to be that useful in cases where your security is very high, unless you want it only to cover collectibles or you want to store keys/passphrases in it (which would be a fatal mistake).

Expensive sir, must feed family. When free e-book version?

if my kids appear on here trying to sell my collectibles please dont rip them off :)

makes an interesting topic as even if you do manage to pass them  on, whoever is the recipient may want to offload them and for many there isnt a market outside of this forum.

I’ve been thinking the same thing with my collectibles. I’ve told my wife where the passphrase, seed words and passwords for my wallets etc are to be found, but not sure about the collectibles, she wouldn’t have a clue.
I’ve been thinking of setting up an alternative account on here, which I would give the details off to her, but unsure how she could prove she is related to me. She wools only activate the account after my death?  I wouldn’t want her getting upset etc with trying to prove who she is.
Any ideas?
Been thinking of some code words to leave with someone on here ?
I know The Collectibles is a highly respected and trustworthy part of the forum , but ? Hopefully it won’t come to this.

   Sharks are always around when they smell newbies and people in distress.....have them browse thru past sales and see prices sodl.

   Send them here>> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5130318.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5130318.0)

Why would a will not be a good idea in this circumstance? You can keep your will private. Lock it in a bank safety deposit box, keep it at a safety storage place, hide it somewhere...etc.  What are your other options ?

Security through obscurity is not security. None of what you listed is safe. Some may argue that those deposit boxes are actually safe since it isn't just obscurity. However, wherever you rent something like that out you are pushing security through trust (e.g. trust that the bank will not compromise it; that it won't be robbed, etc.) not math.

Supposedly upon your death your safe deposit box gets locked down pending investigation. This is standard. If you have a co-signer on your safe deposit box, they should go to the bank as soon as possible and empty your box.

If you have cash in your safe deposit box, and no one gets there before it is locked down, they confiscate the cash pending its validation.

Stuff i've heard. Not sure if its 100% accurate, but this was from a bank employee, so ?

thanks!

Yep always have your better half have access to your box (as long as you are in good terms with her) ;)

Safe Deposit Boxes - What You Need to Know (https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/safe-deposit-box)

15-things-you-should-know-about-safe-deposit-boxes (https://tiphero.com/15-things-you-should-know-about-safe-deposit-boxes)

If that is true, one of the people investigating could likely steal the written down key and steal the funds as soon as they reach the next machine. Therefore, in reality a safe deposit box only creates a fake sense of security.

Well then what would you suggest? You've got to have some sort of plan. Some plan is better than no plan, right?

If you own a collectible with the private key made by someone else and you think a "I promise I didnt keep the keys" is good enough.. then a bank is essentially just as safe.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

This is (sort of) true and you gave good advice but for the wrong reason.  If you find out someone died and you rush to empty their safe deposit box before it's locked down, you'll be unwittingly giving yourself motive to any potential foul play.  

Also, even if you are the executer of a will, you will have difficulty accessing a safe deposit box without a legal order.  However, if you are a co-signer on a safe deposit box, you can access it with no issues ever, even after a death of the other signer.  Basically, if you want to avoid a hassle, a co-signer > a will, when it comes to accessing a safe deposit box.  When it comes to who is the legal owner of the items in the safe deposit box, that's where a will comes in.



What is a better alternative?  Imagine you have 7 or 8 figures of physical items.  Where would you store them?  Hide them in your house and hope nobody takes a wrench to your family members?

I can attest that a cosigner to a Bank Safety Deposit box was not locked out of access post-mortem nor was any hold placed on access, nor was the box searched. If there was not a co-signer on the box-access to its contents would have been subject to arbitration.   

Thanks for raising this very important issue.

Many of us are paranoid (for good reason!) so we can make the mistake of using a security system that is far too complex for our loved ones in case we die.  If they can't easily figure it out, then they are more likely to go onto google or reddit and look for help - and quickly get scammed.  So it is important to do a "test run" of your security system with your heirs to see if they can figure it out without any input from you. 

There are a bunch of new multisig security systems that are easy to use and provide very strong security, such as the Casa system:  https://keys.casa/     
These can help a lot with estate planning while preserving security.

I was not talking about collectibles here, but rather passphrases, seeds, paper wallets et. al. For collectibles such a box is a decent option as long as you properly document, in say the will you mentioned, everything that you have in there.

You don't need Casa to do this. I don't even see why you'd want Casa to do it as creating multi-sig is trivial. However, their "Key Shield Multisig" offer seems interesting.

I confirm this.

I my case I put my wife as my "in case of death contact".
With a valid death certificate and my key she can open my safe deposit box. Without she can't (ever).
Even in the event of a nasty divorce, no judge can freeze my deposit box.

Obviously this is in my jurisdiction. It depends where you are

What's wrong with encrypting your passcodes, seeds, etc. in your will?

Or actually if you want to ensure that you can release this, just create a time-based message to which you have to refresh every [duration]. If you're dead, it's sent!

What you describe is essentially a dead man's switch. There are several online sites, I use at least one, in addition to Google's Inactive Account Manager = euphemism for a dead man's switch that waits at least 3 months of inactivity.

It's as simple as a "Send Later" .. which even Gmail has now. Just make sure your message is encrypted, and teach your beneficiary how to decrypt it. Or if you need to make it simple, a pointer to a second factor or object you know only they have, like the password to your encrypted USB device stored somewhere she knows. You'll have to update this often, depending on your circumstance.

Some people just do plain paper wallets or seed phrases as cold storage and that also works.

Thank you for sharing this. I was unaware of this option.  Very cool.

Nice topic Chi it got me thinking about a scene from an old movie Hackers. In it Phreak was in jail and had to send a msg for a whereabout of an item to set him free. He said “it’s in a place where I put that thing one time”. Those that didn’t watch the movie it was behind a random locker in his highschool. Now if I were to leave my seed written on tungsten. I would make it a personal thing for my loved that only they would get. Just my two Satoshi.

https://i.imgur.com/2Da1Iae.png
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2019/11/26/bitcoin-isnt-dead-but-one-day-you-will-be/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2869506425&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesCrypto#57e00fd85bb5