Bitcoin Forum

It is commonly said that experience is the best teacher, but someone also said that a wise person does not wait to learn from his or her own experiences, but would watch and learn from what happens to other people.

Sometime last two weeks, someone down my street slept, and unfortunately, did not wake, he's a young guy living alone, he's a known gambler, and not just a normal gambler but a high roller.

Some friends who are really close to him said he has accounts on several online casinos, and that he is very much into sports betting, one guy said he saw the account balance on one of his accounts one time and it was close to $60,000 ($58k+ to be precise).

This guy passed away all of a sudden, he was not sick, nothing nothing, he just slept and did not wake.

And in all his family, friends, no body knew the password to unlock his phone or computer, not even his girl friend.
They have tried all the password ideas they had but non was correct, at the end, they had to reset the phones back to their factory settings , right now as I am typing this post, the family have no idea how they can access the casinos where the guy left tens of thousands of dollars, and neither do they have any idea how to access the money.

The guy is also an investor in crypto currencies, and I personally believe he also have investments in crypto coins which the family may also never be able to access.

In my own personal assessment and assumption, this guy should have nothing less than $120,000 to $150,000 in total, kept online both in cryptocurrencies and gambling accounts.

This incident indeed have thought me some lesson, try and have someone in your family atleast, whom you can trust enough to share your gambling and other financial secret with, for no body knows when death will come knocking, we all pray to live a very long life and die at a prime old age, but to be honest, we still have to plan well so that, if for whatever reason, our live is cut short of our expectations, what we have labored for all through the years we lived, will not end up in the hands of another person or people we don't even know, and have never meet.

This is my advice to online gamblers who cannot do without leaving money in their gambling accounts, and also to crypto traders and investors at large.

What they should have done if they want to have access to his computer is to try to brute force the password. If the password is short they can be lucky, but they may not be have luck.

I have little amount of money that I can afford to lose on gambling sites, but this would be helpful for those that are gambling with high amount of money.

This is a good lesson for bitcoin and other crypto holders and traders and we have discussed things like this several times on bitcoin discussion in the past, but about bitcoin holding.

I have not told my family but not because I don't believe in them,I fully trust them 100%,the reason is I don't have that much for the moment,when I will do if I ever will that is a sound advice to tell your family so they can access the goods in case something bad happens to me.

Tomorrow is promised to no one and that is my statement in life by which I live life trying to live at the fullest the day that is given to me which is the present day and I don't care much what can happen tomorrow as tomorrow may never come.

The password to open the cellphone is a way to keep everything private and cannot be easily opened by other people.
But usually most people will save all their ID and passwords in document or certain note that can be opened at any time and this is done to make it easier if they forget IDs or passwords that are really important.

From the case you convey, I actually feel sorry for the family because they cannot take all the assets that the person owned when he died just because they were stored in crypto on gambling sites or private wallets which are usually used as place to store investment assets.
But when doing factory settings all existing data can be lost and it will even make it more difficult to find where the person has stored all their assets.

My advice is to always save any data related to IDs or passwords in note so that when something happens it can be easily found.
From cases like this we can learn valuable lessons.

It is quite a rare occurrence where a gambler saves quite a lot of money in an online casino, yeah maybe because he is very active in gambling so it is normal for him to leave funds in his gambling account.
What's strange is that he doesn't have anyone in his family who he can trust to share important information, even though it's a secret, especially for his crypto investments.
My advice, if you can't trust anyone near you, is to save it manually in a notebook or something so that when there is a sudden incident like that, the family can still access it because you have written it down in the notebook and when family members find the note they can take the money.

This advice is very important for those who have crypto money, at least write down a will, such as exchange site account information, email and maybe even a casino account that has a lot of money in it, because I learned from people who died suddenly so they didn't have time to leave all their messages. the money information he had, meant that his family, including his children, did not receive the money they inherited from their father.

I also tell my wife all the information about my money in crypto and casinos because it is important for her to know so that she can manage the money I collect for her and my child, therefore it is important to give trust to one of the trusted people to hold information about money. We. Unless you live alone, you probably don't need to write a will, no one ever knows when death will come  :(

Why not contact the casinos where he had accounts to see if they can give some of the remaining balance to his family now that hes gone? I'm not sure if this is feasible, but it's worth a try.

Maybe OP's story will be an example or reminder for gamblers who have large funds in several online casinos, and maybe for the crypto issue I think they have anticipated it because in this forum people often create threads when death arrives.
And when it comes to money in online gambling, I never leave any money in it. Because I always use money that I can afford to lose and when I win any amount I immediately withdraw it, and if I want to play again I will top up again with a small amount and if I lose there is no money left, and it continues like that. So I don't think my family or wife should know the password except crypto, my wife has known it for a long time.

This is an unforeseen event that the guy never expected to see and that is why he had never shared his passwords and accounts. Maybe somewhere on his house everything is written but if cannot be seen, it means that he has trusted no one with all of these vital account logins and details.

I agree to neilost about trying to contact the casino. If he was able to submit kyc there then it is possible that it will be considered to give the funds to the retrieving family informing the casinos about the passing of the account owner whom is their relative.

This could have have a little chance but still worth a shot.

And talking about life lessons, we do not know when will be passing into this world.

I was thinking that maybe they could have tried using his fingerprints or face unlock system. But then I realized these systems might only work if the person has a pulse or body temperature. This story can be a lesson for many. It's important to have someone in your family who knows a bit about your financial situation. They don't need to know everything, just a hint about it. I'm not married and live alone. I don't feel comfortable trusting someone I'm not married to with such private details, so I understand why even his girlfriend didn't know the password to his phone. I'd rather share those secrets with my siblings, because we have a much closer connection.


I don't think that will be possible since they couldn't open the phone and had already set it to default. There's no way to know which and what casino he had played on or gambled.

It's possible that some of his friends are aware of certain casinos. It would be helpful to suggest this to his family so that they have other options available. It would be a shame if the family didn't benefit from his funds.

Absolutely. It may sound weird or funny, but writing a will does not necessarily that you are preparing for your death, as no one knows when we're going to leave this world, but it would be of a great help when that time comes especially to your family. At least have a plan about this matter, especially if that is an immense amount of money. And we are talking about crypto money, which is kind of hard to access and in the worst case, your family couldn't have any access at all and cannot get that money because we all know how money works in crypto. But yes, at least have someone whom you really trust, it can be your wife or a trusted friend. So, when the time comes, your hard work will not be wasted because someone will benefit from it.

I think this is similarly to several discussions about passing Bitcoin wealth to heirs just that this one expanded the scope of the discussion to cover other digital ventures. I even created this one (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5462812.msg62676256#msg62676256) on how to pass Bitcoin wealth to the next generation and the discussion revealed various options from which anyone can choose.

This topic have also draw my attention to the fact that it is not only Bitcoin asset that can be passed to heirs but everything of value. So it is important we work out ways of achieving this as no one can predict how things will end even though we hope for the best.

He did not prepare for the worst. That's sad. I don't want to leave this world where my family will get mad at me just because they cannot access my accounts in different wallets. Which is why I already prepared it all.
I just got one notebook where all my passwords and even the recovery numbers for the Authenticator/2FA are there just in case something goes wrong with my phone too. Regarding gambling accounts, it's there too, just in case I will leave some funds there.
My wife knows all of that and in case there's a fire, my notebook will be the second that should be saved after the kids are safe because we can recover it all when we have the accounts but saving the house equipment would not especially the heavy ones.
She knows what to do too as I have taught her about cryptocurrencies and I even let her do the withdrawals sometimes so that she can learn easily.
It's true. We cannot be selfish about these things just because we are hardcore privacy believers. They have the right to know about these things too just in case something bad happens to us. Knock on wood.

That is also what i am doing. Have someone to at least have an idea to where and what to do whenever something bad that will happen to me though i am not like the guy that have substantial money that he left behind. But let us also note that this could be a double edged sword as we might lost our money to the ones we trusted even if we are still alive so let us be careful and pick our poison carefully.

Also equally someone has said that this is also how some bank managers get rich from monies locked in accounts that are not traceable for a long time, they assume at a point that the money has lost and they do away with it within themselves. Well how true this is may yet be proven but there is element of logical reason on that because some men don't disclose there accounts, properties home and abroad to their spouce nor brothers and no one close actually. I have known some cases where some men die and the wife is not able to trace belongings of the man both financial and material.

So this topic is another clarion call for the living to try and disclose certain securities of our business to trusted and loved ones. Regards to cryptocurrency, passwords to exchanges or casino, we can start by at least writing them down in different exercise books despite that we fear fire outbreak but perhaps something can be safed. We can't live in isolation just like that because we want to keep everything away from third party. If that guy wrote those password down in an exercise book in his house or alerted someone where he stores his security codes, surely they would have been able to unlock them. It is unfortunate.

Like it is said, a wise man learns from someone else mistake.

- This situation isn't uncommon, and it's becoming more prevalent as digital technology and cryptocurrencies continue to gain ground. I anticipate that in the near future, nearly everyone will possess their private cryptocurrency wallet.
- Hence, efficiently managing and safeguarding your private keys is of paramount importance. It involves not only figuring out how and where to store them but also establishing a backup plan in case you're unable to access them and need assistance from trusted family members.
- In my case, I keep one set of private keys and their corresponding passwords encrypted in a bank's asset custody service. My wife is the one I've entrusted with the knowledge of how to access them if the need arises. It's an extra layer of security and peace of mind, knowing that the keys to our digital assets are safeguarded and accessible in emergencies.

That's good advice, @OP because we have to be able to put our trust in the people closest to us so we can share it with them. They also share it with us because family relationships are closer emotionally than with other people.
In this case, the person may have had problems with his family members and made him distrust his family so that when he died, his family members could not open his cell phone to access what was inside his cell phone.

At least, if you are married, you can share your secrets with your wife/husband because he is the person closest to you now and forever. Your husband/wife can continue what you have started and he can use what you leave with him so that they can develop it for your family.
But trusting our family members or continuing to distrust it is a choice and we cannot force them to do it if they don't believe it.

That is true; without experience, we will not know if we are learning from what happens in our lives. It's like when I didn't know much about Bitcoin, most of my acquaintances said it was a scam, but when I learned and studied Bitcoin, I discovered that it really has potential.

And over the course of my study and research on bitcoin and cryptocurrency, I found that they can really help me in terms of finances. And it's really proven and tested, and there are many who have proven it here in the field of the crypto space. If I hadn't had the experience to turn it into a lesson and research it, I probably would have just believed what the Bitcoin naysayers were saying. Though, here in cryptocurrency, I learned to gamble, and I didn't regret it either because I also had opportunities to win in crypto gambling. Because with every loss I experience, I discover strategies to win from time to time.

Indeed, telling your password/private key to people you trust is a pretty good decision because when something bad happens to us, they can get access to the account and use the assets in it for our needs. However, the problem is when people we trust abuse our trust and use these assets for their personal needs, that is a problem. That's why there are some people who don't want to entrust their passwords/private keys to other people, not because they don't trust them, it's just that they are afraid of their trust being misused.

This is important if you have a huge amount of money kept on these platforms, life is too short and unpredictable anything can happen without our control so instead of your money benefiting from the money that you are keeping the platform will own it unless any of the immediate family can access those accounts.

All of us should have someone in our family whom we can confide for our sensitive information it should be a wife a son or a brother depending on your situation, this is like insurance where you invest money so in a time of need you can have something, this money should belong to your kins, money that they can use when you cannot provide any more because you are already gone.

Death is one thing very few of us want to talk about or prepare for because it's a terrifying topic,but truth of the matter is everyone of us will walk down this road.
And honestly the better we confront this reality the better and if we know that that we can help family in one way or another should our assets pass onto someone more else then we need someone trust worthy to have this access...

But unfortunately with crypto where we have total control of such assets, am afraid to say these will remain forever locked unless he has some backups somewhere.


With casinos, am pretty sure his ID can be used to grant them access to his account(s) or a court can be used aswell .

But resetting his mobile device won't help them and need to find other ways to gain access...

These might never be recovered unless they are on some third party platform, but let them try to start with an email address to see what he has been up to...

You can not not trust anyone enough not to tell them your password. You should have at least one person you trust to death that knows these things.  I heard a story of a guy who had an accident and when he was rushed to the hospital unconscious, there was on family member with knowledge of his phone's password to be able to gain access to his account and  make deposit before treatment began.

Brute force for password may have worked. The OP can suggest to them to the family members to contact a cybersecurity expert to crack the password using password with HashCat, Kali Linux or other proven methods. It will be worth any amount they will be charged for the service.

It's a sad story. But that's often the case when a person dies and doesn't leave a will. Most people don't give their passwords to the people closest to them. So it's not like the guy didn't trust his relatives. I think he just wanted his funds to be safe and he didn't think about the fact that he could die at any minute.

This is a legal matter they should show all the evidence like death certificate and other important documents that you are an immediate family, the casino will decide depending on the advice of their legal team, but the family deserves to get the all balance, honestly this is something new to all of us I search the internet to find a similar situation but I cannot find one.

If the casino and the family of the deceased are on the same location, then they both will be under the law and ruling of the court in that country about this matter, if this happens in a bank like here in our country , the deceased family will automatically get all the balance, even if there's no will left by the family.

This is a big lesson for high rollers to always keep their money safe in times of emergency, they have to be educated enough to know what to do in unforeseen circumstances.

At least we can be honest with ourselves, online things related to the internet are certainly not eternal, we never know what will happen to us today and so on.

In general nowadays, almost the average person who is involved in gambling, they do it online, this is actually something that everyone must understand, even though we hide ourselves from our families, we are involved in gambling, At least we have records of all our assets that are owned and stored properly. At any time, if something happens as the OP said, of course someone can have access to the assets we own.

This is actually not only a priority for online gambling, banks, crypto assets and so on that have assets in them, we have to have small records to keep, maybe we tell these records to people we trust, If something happens, please take all the notes that I keep in a certain place, maybe these messages have meaning for the family left behind.

Let death come when the time is right, Ameen, but brother it's better to move away from this world leaving nothing behind for people that are not there to help in the first place than to just died and same people having access to all your hard work, it's like you died because of them and for them, so they will now enjoy all you've worked for? Never!

I would rather died taking everything to the grave, unless I really have someone who is worth leaving everything behind for, if I die right now no one can have access to my Bitcoin, I did this right, until I have people that loves me for the real me, not what I have sweat to build in the past years.

You don't know how heartless people can be, if you are love cherish and loved its fine to die talking your private keys to your grave, let them hustle hard and feel what its like to become successful,  people don't care if you die or not, they never loved, they only want your things.

They can request for death certificate for the guy then ask the support of a certain casino to access his account by providing valid credentials that will prove that they are the beneficiary of the account. I’m pretty sure that a high roller account undergo to KYC already which means casino can verify all supporting documents for the claimants.

This is really a sad story and most probably very common in crypto users like us since we value privacy. We make sure to secure our assets from anyone so this kind of scenario is inevitable. I do agree that at least have someone to have access to your account just in case but make sure to limit it to your real beneficiaries.

Learning from the experiences of others is indeed the right approach, but sometimes our curiosity leads us to try things ourselves, and if we fail, it becomes a hard-learned lesson. Addiction is a risk that everyone faces in gambling, and severe addiction can indeed lead to the destruction of lives. It's challenging to prevent such situations because even when it comes to God's laws, we often fail to follow them, let alone the advice from someone else's experience.

We can only hope that, if we ever face addiction, the worst-case scenarios won't materialize. Addiction can take control of your life, causing you to lose friends and family, and leading to negative feelings, even potentially leading to desperation or self-harm.

Prevention is always better than cure, as we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where gambling addiction leads to tragic consequences. Our existence in this world should be about contributing positively, and ending one's life due to addiction only signifies a sense of worthlessness. Learning from the experiences of others is an effective strategy to minimize the risks, as addiction can be lurking just around the corner. At times, when we lose and frustration takes over, we may lose control of ourselves. So, those who claim that gambling is fun, it's not entirely true; it can be enjoyable when you win, but the risks and consequences are always present.

Yes, I agree with your opinion, friend. Because if we are involved in the online world such as gambling and cryptocurrency, it would be good if we had trusted people who know the secrets in the field of gambling or cryptocurrency that we have. Maybe if you think about it from a negative perspective, there are risks too. Because we as humans cannot read what is in human hearts and minds. Because it could be that someone we initially trust completely, in the end, betrays us. Especially in the context of sharing financial secrets (gambling & cryptocurrency), the risk is quite high. Because quite a few people change their minds because of money (good people become bad).

But even so, this is still very important to do. Because as the OP discussed, none of us know how long we will live in this world. So despite the high risks, sharing financial secrets related to gambling and cryptocurrency is very necessary. However, to minimize the worst possibility, we must be able to choose the right person who can be trusted and can keep secrets well. Because carrying out this action, in my personal opinion, has positive and negative impacts that range in the ratio of 50:50.

He is not a knowledgeable investor after all or a good business and gambler, if you have that huge money the rule is always protect your money for your heirs because of uncertainty in life, we have so many threads about leaving all our Crypto portfolio in case something happens to us.

If the amount is that huge there should be a will or an instruction on how to retrieve these funds on all the platforms or wallets where he kept them, all of us should have a backup in case something like this happens, the only recourse for the family is to through legal counsel this is very costly or they have to file a formal claim to the casino and ask a court to intervene and decide in their favor.
This is not a little advice but for me is a piece of important advice for all of us here whether you are a gambler a trader or a hodler.

We often discuss this issue that if someone dies suddenly what will happen to the money in the account? Do we share our keys and passwords with anyone in our family or do we keep them only to ourselves? The guy you mentioned is no doubt a big gambler and crypto investor. His family will get nothing from him on his death. Despite his wealth, the family today has to face an intolerable environment. In such a situation no one will have anything to do. We must learn from his incident. There are many people like him who never thought of sharing their keys with anyone else but after hearing this incident today they may again feel that they must share their keys with someone. Despite having more money, the family has nothing which is truly heartbreaking.

Perhaps that person had no intention that anyone other than him would ever come into possession of those online accounts, or in other words, he did not even intend to leave anything to anyone. As for the family, if they know the exact casino or perhaps which CEX he used, with an official death certificate they can request that the funds in these accounts be allocated to the legal heirs.

Otherwise, they can try to guess passwords or look for a possible backup, because it is unlikely that this person kept all the data in his head.

If we can prevent it, why should we do things we shouldn't do? Yes, you are right, in the life we live, of course we have to be able to provide kindness to other people and it will be impossible for us to be useful to other people if we cannot do good for ourselves. When we lose in gambling, we must still be able to control ourselves so that we don't do things that we don't need to do. It would be better for us to look for pleasure in other things and not make worse mistakes.

It is quite a sad history if you think  about it, not only because the mountain of grief that family must be going through because the unexpected death of some loved family member, but also because they must add that grief to the fact this person likely took that money with him to the grave.
I have read about stories like this one before, usually is about someone who used to be an excellent trader and could not share their private keys to their family members.
The lesson this story and many others is supposed to give to all of us is that we should make sure at least one of our most trusted family members can have access in case we would not be around any longer. It does not have to be something as obvious as giving the password or private keys to them, I believe it would be enough to keep a last will document within a safe place where one could be sure that family member will eventually find it when they clean around or something.

Anyways, stay safe people.  :(

Such things rarely happen but most of the time, the deceased would have already told at least one person about what they have and where they have it so that it can be accessed when they are no more. Talking about the incident you've mentioned, I would say that they could find a way around the matter if they tried harder. They could find someone who is an expert in unlocking devices without having to factory reset them and if they could unlock the devices, they could some how find the access to his gambling accounts because he must have had emails and everything logged in already.

The advice is good though, I agree that a person who knows that they have wealth that only they have access to should find someone who they trust and tell them about where they can find the passwords and access to their wealth once he dies because these things are sudden and nobody can know when it's time to say goodbye.

There can be some tricks that can bypass that phone if it's already lock. I think that there's a possibility to do that when you install some program or let those tech people do the job.

Of course it comes with some fees but definitely that there's a way because I have seen people offer that type of service. They're not hackers but it all comes with a software that they probably took somewhere else or paid for.

Yeah, like bruteforcing it but it is going to take time. Maybe there's also a software that can do that brute forcing for them.

It was a sad story where he couldn't give what he had to the people he loved. We can learn from this story so that we don't experience it and can share what we have with our family members, wives/husbands, children or people we trust. We have to be really careful in choosing the people we want to trust so that they can use what we have properly and can even develop it better. Maybe it's difficult, but if it's for the sake of the family, especially wife/husband and children, that's what we have to do so they can use it well. But if he really doesn't have anyone he can trust, it's okay to leave everything without anyone to use it rather than the people around him just using it for unnecessary things.

I can understand about having a confidant in cryptocurrency savings/holdings but I do not think I can have one on my gambling activities and accounts.  Best thing to do is do not leave huge funds in any centralized services like exchanges and casinos.  Always withdraw your fund to your own wallet.  It should be practiced since fund transfer fee isn't that huge.

As a matter of fact I had my parents keep my private key (together with he instruction how to access them) since I trust them more than myself in keeping my important documents and things safe.

It's very important we get someone to know about some of these fund when we make them because it's very sad we have funds somewhere but not accessible by anyone hence can't be used by anyone especially when these people aren't computer literate enough.

There are way to actually by pass those password if they could get his user id, they could possibly recover the password and gain access back into his casino or betting account but if it has to do with the crypto account they will most likely loose all the money and may never recover it as the security on some crypto accounts as such that you can't really by pass except the owner of the account provides their details.