Bitcoin Forum

I received a request for this on another thread but thought I'd post it here. This is technically a repost of a thread I made (but I probably made it a year or so ago). If you follow this method it's still possible to psned the coins you have in your wallet.

I'm going to be doing this whole thing in electrum this will ensure funds can be salvaged by anyone with a note you leave after a certain amount of time.

A slight note on a potential weakening of security here before we start in that once you do this your bitcoins may be suseptible to an attack if someone receives the paper and the ECC algorithm used for bitcoin is broken (but it's likely to remain strong until 2050 afaik).

Step 1, generate an address or a wallet as you like. If a family member would be able to log onto your phone, you could produce an address there - alternatively you could bluetooth them over a QR code with a small explanation as to what it's for (with a fresh private key on it that has no funds).
It doesn't matter what wallet you do this in and for me, I'm just going to use the address in my profile: 1JRmjyGo3kpdXcQeAeTBmGtgkC1AomHKED - but you'll have to remeber to broadcast the transaction in electrum.

On to making a timelocked transaction:

1. Open send tab in electrum with your funds in you want someone to be able to access some day, put in the fresh address you've created and hit max and "Pay".
https://i.imgur.com/Kddpu7Z.png
2. Click advanced
https://i.imgur.com/I5bkIkj.png
3. As you can see, there's an option to edit the block height in this tab
I'm going off the idea there are 144 blocks a day and, for this example, I'll set the block time to 20 years from now.
654555+(144x365.25x20)=1697475
https://i.imgur.com/uQr6qGg.png
4. Click finalise > sign > export (bottom left) > export to file > and name and save your file
https://i.imgur.com/wyFS6ag.png

If you don't have anyone who could inherit your btc or don't want them to, you could ask a charity to accept them when you pass and send them or a cryptosupportive solicitors in the hope they can broadcast it across when you don't move the funds and don't respond for a certain amount of time. You could also publicly post a transaction you want to be confirmed or send it to someone you know to broadcast it.

Great tutorial, I have known about time locked transactions for some time now but the tutorials I saw online were too convoluted and I did not understood how it was done but this is as clear as it can be.

Just a question do you know when that advanced tab was added on electrum? Maybe it was always there and I did not put attention but I do not recollect anything of the sort being there, is it a new feature? Whatever the case this reminds me I need to update my electrum wallet just to keep my coins safe.

It used to be preview but I used to have to copy the text and edit it manually. I expected to do the same again this time but it looks like it's been made a lot easier in version 4.

So it makes it easier to set timelocks like this and to handle multisigs. I think I also saw an option for coin join but I haven looked into thatych so it might just be a basis point for it.

What happens if someone who sets, for example, 20 years from today's date but they don't die? Is it possible to cancel this transaction?

What if someone who sets it for 5 years later date or block, dies in a year or two? Is there any possibility for their known family member to get these coins before the set "LockTime" period by any means or they need to wait for 5 years before they are sent the coins to their address?

Yes, you'd just have to sign and broadcast a transaction emptying that address or moving them to the same address and renewing the transaction again. I'd assumed you'd end up with a more favourable transaction though at that point (eg you get more funds).


Yes if you left your mnemonic phrase or private key in a place they could easily find... Which is possible if you trust them or you'll know they'll look in a certain place. But I don't think this is a bad backup in case a physical store gets destroyed as well...

Is it possible for you to perform this task as well and show it to us in this thread only?  ::)


More funds? How? Is it locked based on fiat and I may get more btc if value tumbles down? Or are you including the fee that is being paid? Please elaborate.

P.S. a suggestion for you here if it matters at all.
Actually, in your first image, you've shown your balance. It's really good to "show it off"  ;D but I believe you should have blurred it away.  ;)

Thanks for the extra information there.

Sorry if this is slightly unrelated but inheritance is something I worry about every now and then and have discussed at length with some others. I don't have much, but still, it's significant for folks back home (purchasing power etc).

Problem still exists for me. I do have people I've already given instructions to, and am trying to bring some young adults into it but I find that because there is no interest at all in Bitcoin and in fact possibly some negative attitude towards it, I fear they may not. For example, gave 2 kids some Bitcoin for birthdays on their last birthdays after a couple of years asked them if they still had it. One lost it. Lost the instructions, lost the keys, everything =) Other one had both intact, but was not able to complete it even though I thought the instructions were fairly simple.

God knows I've tried to coach my partner as well but while they can understand once. Later on it's like all memory or understanding of it's vanished.

I think in the end, for most people we'll have to consider crypto-able legal assistance. Wills. Estate management etc.

It's literally just sending a regular transaction... You still have the funds in your wallet, nothing changes in that regard.

As for the balance thing, it took me a while to take screenshots and work out how imgur works. If you'd like to crop the bottom off so that I don't have to show someone's unconfirmed transaction then that's up to you tbf.


Ah this old thing... Yeah it's a difficult thing to do for those uninterested and even those interested that don't want to be affiliated with it. It probably makes more sense to find a way to at least keep the btc circulating somehow. It might also be possible to. Leave funds on an exchange or make it so tfunds can be transferred to an exchange by broadcasting a transaction which your family might then have access to and just have to click "sell".

This is quite interesting - so basically, rather than actually broadcasting a tx using Timelock, you're just saving the pre-broadcast information on your PC so that if anything happens to you, your coins could be easily sent straight to your family's address without having to access your wallet, right?

I have a question tho: if you choose "Max" as the amount and export the signed tx, what happens if between the day you export it and the day you broadcast it, the input receives more BTC (say you now have 0.77 instead of 0.7514)? Inside the signed exported tx, is the value specified as "max" (0.77) or as the value your input had at the time of signing it (0.7514)?

You'd have to keep updating what you're doing, but I think this should be treated as a method on your portfolio such that you'd pick amounts to increment on before making a transaction.

For example, a while ago I had a multisig with a few different devices and I'd only send funds from my hot wallet to them once it exceeded a threshold of 0.25BTC. I normally have SOME online assets stored without protection anyway (a few mbtc just in case I need them for something) so these would be much easier to recover - some funds might be lost overall but I think this allows for a large amount of someone's funds to be passed along - if not all.

The locktime here is for a scheduled block at which your inheritible bitcoin will be broadcasted but it does not make sure it will get confirmation with the fee you set up in previous months or years. I think it is your idea to opt-in inheritible and its transaction as RBF.

It is a good opt-in feature but mempool is loaded or clear ocassionally and if fee is set up is not very low, I think inheritible bitcoin will come to receiver.

i'm not sure what you mean by this, the type of the locktime (being height or timestamp) doesn't change anything about safety of it. they are both enforced by the protocol and work pretty much the same way.
in fact for longer periods such as 20 years using the timestamp may be better since we can have more blocks or less blocks per day that can accumulate to a big difference in 20 years while timestamp can't  change and has a very small wiggle room.

Only if that exchange still exists after I pass though! Most exchanges seem to refresh wallets often enough, it'd be another hell to fix it with customer support. As long as they're somehow with the keys I suppose they could always seek help from someone. Thinking of making all KINDs of instructions or really just finding a way to put it in a will and update it as much as possible.

Dam now you've got me thinking the blocktime interval might be reduced at some point too...

And yeah I guess the largest miners would lose access to the mempool before they lose access to timeservers and become out of time...


Oh yeah... I was going off coinbase still accepting my same address 6 years later but you probably could find a solicitors/attorneys that will allow you to at least leave them a transaction to broadcast at some point, or you could hide hardware somewhere that's listed on a will.

My ideas are normally reliant on someone giving a friend access as my family would have no idea what they're doing and would probably end up losing stuff...

Great thread but I would like to give OP and readers another thread on Locktime from LoyceV. I read LoyceV's thread in 2019 but never mind to think of when I will use it. I am not a bitcoin whale so at the moment I have not yet imagined when I will use Locktime.

At least now the forum has 2 threads on Locktime (Paper wallet and Electrum wallet). Both 2 threads are in my spreadsheet.

Using Locktime for inheritance planning, backups or gifts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5180850.0)

Mastering bitcoin 1st edition, chapter 5 (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin/9781491902639/ch05.html)

I don't know I can not find it in the chapter 6 of its 2nd version (https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch06.asciidoc)

^ That is a good tutorial OP.
This is really of great help, I have already read few threads about the same post that if bitcoin holders died suddenly what will happen to his bitcoins if failed to give the key to someone, and I find this as the perfect answer to those posts. Cheers to you OP and to others whose helping bitcoin holders like me with the lock time feature. But as of now, I am still a small-time bitcoin holder but I perfectly know that in the future I will be using this or I think it will not be bad at all if we will just provide the key to whom we think worthy to inherit our bitcoins like in my case I am a single dad and I only have one kid and legally he will inherit everything that I have just need to teach him to keep it in secret.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5284824.0

I think the thread above could be one of those kind of such that tries to remind users and hodlers on the need for letting trusted person know about their hodling and I think that is a good advise for all of us and others .

Thanks for the interesting material, I made a translation of your tutorial for the Russian forum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5285515

I have a question where will the created transaction be stored? Can I be 100% sure that it will not be removed from the mempool in 20 years?

You store it locally. It is impossible to place a transaction into mempool before the time specified in nLocktime.

Yeah you'd have tobroadcast it when you want to spend it. You could store a piece of paper with a qr code of the transaction and private key it spends to if you wanted to gift it to a relative to use at some point.

As long as there isn't a non backwards compatible hard fork that invalidates the transaction then it should still be valid...

True. This has been an ongoing issue ever since bitcoin became an asset. A lot of people we don't know who have a bunch of bitcoins stored in them hard drives who have lost them or died can't have their families enjoy what they have cautiously saved up, so having this compelling feature integrated, if not introduced as a standalone, is really beneficial not only for those people who are looking forward to giving their investments up to their trusted loved ones but also for their security.

Its a good tutorial and I thing that it is usable by person who has bitcoin. It is also be an answer for those people on how they will transfer their bitcoin to their family once they died. Well, honestly I never wanted to make this because first, I have no children yet and second, I have no large amount of bitcoin. But I keep this tutorial soon as I think I will gonna do the same thing.

This is probably one of the biggest disadvantages of bitcoin and I think many of us have the same problem, I cannot give my family direct access to my coins since that will be foolish but in the case something were to happen to me I would like them to use the money I have invested in bitcoin to improve their lives and yet their complete lack of interest on the subject impress me.

But this is nothing new really and it is not privative of bitcoin, it is as if people do not want to think about those subjects and it is why so many people die without a will not realizing that by doing so they are only fuelling family feuds that could have been easily avoided.

like everything else in bitcoin you have the full authority to decide what to do with your bitcoins after you pass away too. this is not a disadvantage but a great advantage. in other circumstances with fiat for instance you would have had to rely on centralized entities such as shady banks, the government, lawyers,... to handle it for you but now you can do it all on yourself.

Yeah, in the other case to this, you have much more control of what happens to the funds too. If you don't want anyone to inherit them then thats fine and you can just leave them as they are or if you wanted to give them as an extra amount to someone. Solicitors also charge an extra few % on what the government charge too so you're circumventing their charge and only need to pay the tax portion.

This is actually a good idea when somebody asks about how if they die today, what will happen to their BTC. Actually, if we have someone we trust most and he is trusted, we can share about our asset with him/her. But of course, it must be the one that we trust, really trust.
And about inheriting our BTC to our son after several years by setting the speed of the transaction, it can really be implemented. But, i wonder, is it really safe and will arrive at that time? How is there is something error? of course, it may be one of the risks.

Isn't it true that if the transaction has been confirmed, we can't cancel it? I also wonder about it, if we really intend to give it to someone else, it may not be a matter for us because we just let it arrived at the address.

If you trust no one, then leave it be. This is enough to tell that you will choose to just keep your investments to yourself if you will die than to share it to your loved ones. I chose to share my private keys to my brither if in case there will be something bad to happen. If he choose to use my investment for personal purposes, then he is free to do so even without my consent. I would more give importance to our relationship as siblings than to be greedy of my wealth. There's no third party in this technology such as Bitcoin bank so decision is on you.

Thanks for sharing this method. Argued about this last week in a thread. The method is good but if death happens sooner than expected, the loved one might not receive and use it when it's needed. If there's more advanced method to access the coin incase one dies before the lock period is over, I'd love to hear it.

You could create one that sends it immediately and shove it in a safe deposit box or somewhere so it can be salvaged upon death but there's not a good option this way, if you trust the person well with your funds and they don't care so much about money you could share with them the transaction but that wouldn't be my go to just in case...


You'd educate someone on how to broadcast it or you'd have something that sends an email after a certain amount of time or print instructions off... I don't think automation is the hard part here, you could slao see if a solicitors would take a small cut to broadcast a transaction (there are some crypto friendly ones afaict).

  I am looking into making this for my family. I think its a great idea

  I have bought some Coldkey bonds that were made here>> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5228739.0
 
  Its a great idea, on one card you have the raw TX and the private and pub key of where the funds will be going to.

  So all a person has to do is hodl onto this card and when the block height is reached, scan the raw TX,broadcast it and the btc will end up in the Pub address of the card.

  Once the owner of the card is ready to redeem, all he/she has to do is sweep the private key.

  You don't have to worry where the funds are going to on an exchange..its all self contained.

  A person can make his own on paper and laminate for protection. Cover the private key area with a holo just an additional safety precaution.

I have separate bitcoin wallets for each of my two families so if something happens they each gain access to one. Not that I want to die before them though. I won't be having kids so there will be nothing for anyone to inherit. I obviously should stay alive longer than them so I will leave my private keys in my will and give them to somewhere it will help as a donation.