Bitcoin Forum

Just remember:
You could easily be hit by a truck today: No time to tell anybody about your secret stash of Bitcoin stamped on a piece of metal buried in your garden. No time to tell anybody the password to your bip38-encrypted paper wallet.

Where it is nice, that your Bitcoin are safe from the government and banks, it would be really sad, should you suddenly die and the Bitcoin are just lost, instead of supporting your own children.

So, I am less interested in theoretical ways to solve that problem, but more if somebody here actually did something to solve it.

I have thought about that also and came up an idea but I don't know how to work it out.
I think you should do something with multisigned address where more people have a key of the wallet but none of them can access the funds by themself.

That would be an obvious solution. The question is: Should they know of each other? If they don't know of each other, how could the multisigs be brought together, if you die?

Well, maybe one of the family member could be part of that multisig access. EVen if you hide a stash of Cash in your garden, and no one knows about it, it will probably be hidden there for a long time, unless someone digs it up.

You could put it into your will at a notary.

Have been thinking about this, not only for bitcoin, but all the digital things, like email, a lot of documentation is within mails and the digital domain, it should be convienient if people can access your digital documents should you pass away.

One of the benefits of the blockchain is that we don't need notaries anymore in the future.
There is a nice website where you can (secretly) store documents on the blockchain and proof that you wrote them at a certain date.

http://www.proofofexistence.com/

With multisig you can solve the rest.

Most of my friends and family have no idea what bitcoin is. It is just some weird hobby I've been into for years (in their eyes). I've simply just left a note and USB in a secure location :)

Create HD wallet, write down the seed sequence. Put the paper in a safe deposit box in a bank and have the manager release access to the box in the event something happens to you with a lawyer consent. Something like a will. That person can only access when you are no longer around. To whom you want to assign it to is up to you. But that person must know that you have a will done

Give someone an nTimeLock Transaction that will be valid in 1-2 years. If you are still alive by then, send the coins to another address before the nTimeLock Tx can be cashed. Repeat until you die and the nTimeLoc Tx will get cashed.

That much for technical possibilities. Now the rational part.
If you are dead, you are dead! You won't care anymore. If noone knows about your Bitcoin stash, you don't have to worry about you dying and the coins begin lost.
However, if someone close to you knows about it (wife etc.), then you might live a better live if she knows she can access the coins if something happens to you (else she might just not stop being annoying because she wants you to give her access to the coins in case something happens).

So as usual, not telling anyone about your coins is the best option here.

It is really necessary (maybe urgent) that the owner of bitcoins (a considerable anount, of course, not just some change earned from faucets) takes measures in order to assure that his bitcoins will not be lost in case he passes away, so that his loved ones will be possible to at least benefit from it.

The idea of a will with a notary seems to be the best, and should be combined with the multisig solution (so that you don't have to trust the notarial service - after all the cryptocurrencies are about trustlessness).

 - First of all, you should educate the people you love (which will be the beneficiaries in your will) about Bitcoin. It's a good idea that they already know what it is about;

 - With the multisig keys it will be possible that you leave one of these keys concealed in the will, the notary will only reveal it after he receives enough proof of your death;

 - The other keys will be left each one to each one of the beneficiaries: With their understanding of what Bitcoin is and how they should proceed in case of your death you can be sure your Bitcoins won't be lost when the time comes.

What happens to them is up to you and how you store them. I must admit this is a potential problem and tricky to solve but you could store your passwords or private keys securely to only be released upon death or use 2 of 3 so your close family can access the coins upon your death.

exactly, thats happends to me too, when i talk to my family about BTC they look at me like   ???  is not a bad idea to kep all info into one pendrive or something like that, so in the end, "someone" can check it and use it.

Maybe the best idea is to give all your info to one REAL friend who is already into the bicoin world, you know, there is always someone near you who know about it too, but there is a high risk you must trust on him ofc :)

A notary i think is not needed, there is lot of "light" ways to solved it, multisig is not a bad idea too.

This isn't a problem.

People are champions in making a problem from nothing.

Well, when we talk about "real" money (in a sense that it's an amount that matters, and not just some pennies) I can hardly believe that no one will be interested. I can assure you that if you let the people you love know about your savings in bitcoins and what was your decision for after your death, they WILL be interested in it and WILL look forward to receiving it when the moment comes.

This is a really interesting thread. You don't see too many of these, these days. :)

I think that the simplest and the best idea will be to give all your BTC secure info to your partner or someone you trust or love, so that your family or good friends can inherit your BTC funds.

What if you have a car accident, where both your partner and you die?

Just keep your paper wallets in the same place where your other important/valuable papers are.

That is what I am currently doing. I  think, that somebody who would look through it, wouldn't recognize it as something valuable and would just throw it away.
I showed my paper wallets to my girlfriend once and told her how much they are worth, but she just asked me, if I would put that money into a bank.
I couldn't really bring my self to telling her, what to do, with them in case of my death, since she already worries enough about the future.

In this case (specially if you don't have adult children) I think our BTC funds will be lost, like in the real world to.

Keeping cold wallet with other important papers is useless if it's encrypted. And if it's not, it's very risky (burglars etc).

There are always some traditional ways like notary or bank deposit box. But I wonder if it's possible to create some sort of decentralised contract, ie that sends specific email to the relevant person, when there's no activity on particular address for 6 months or year...


Anyway, thanks for bringing up this subject, it's worth discussion. I reckon that in 20-30 years there will be quite significant amount of bitcoins lost because of deaths, unless there are some easy solutions available.

If by "in the real world" you mean, that if you have the money in your bank, than no, it would still go to your legal heirs. (In my case, that would mainly be my siblings according to Austrian law)

That's exactly my concern: On the one hand you want your money safe from the government and banks and on the other hand, you want your beloved once to get your Bitcoin, if something happens to you. There is also always the danger of a foul player. 1-2 years ago, there was a case, where a notary forged last wills in Austria.

One is possible, but get two right is not that easy.

Thats why you should always let your love one know all the important stuff like bank account, loan, property, investment and including BTC wallet password.

Tell her now just to be safe then sorry...

If the idea is to keep the knowledge of your bitcoins away from the claws of the government, instead of the notarial service will, you could adapt Aswan's great idea of giving "someone an nTimeLock Transaction that will be valid in 1-2 years. If you are still alive by then, send the coins to another address before the nTimeLock Tx can be cashed. Repeat until you die and the nTimeLoc Tx will get cashed." (to be better yet) you should combine the nTimeLock to the MultiSig, so that three conditions will be necessary to gain access to your bitcoins: your death, the nTimeLock term, and the use of the MultSig keys of each beneficiary.

The ideas of simply trusting someone with the knowledge and powers to control your bitcoins (for instance, to let a family member or friend know your private key+password) is dangerous (trust is dangerous) I am not saying that the person will betray/deceive you (although it is possible), but it is possible that the person will be forced/coerced to do your loss. (Especially in violent countries like the one I live in - Brazil - this is a real concern.. people are kidnapped here for US$1000.00 or even less... :-\)

It stays there forever, sorta like the Bitcoins on a wallet I forgot about on a Macbook that was stolen in 2010!

I would be a millionaire if I never had that laptop stolen!

I got a book full of Passwords in my locker.
My best People know about it, and they know that they can use it if i should die.

thats my solution.
- yup i trust those People totally -

In my safe deposit box is a USB with all the instructions and BTC.
Definitely good to have a plan for this.

and the thief probably doesnt even know he had millions of dollars in his hands at the time as well lol
probably some crackhead swapped it for a $100  since btc was worth hardly anything and nobody really knew about it in 2010

In the US, at least, using a notary is a bad idea. They generally have no capacity to store documents safely and securely. A larger law firm storing it with your Will and/or Trust in their vault would be much more prudent.

Safe deposit boxes, perhaps, but there is risk there.

This question has been asked way to often.

Here is my answer: Satoshi make sure blockchain will scoop all your bitcoins when you're dead and distribute them to your children. Just tell your children to create a wallet with a secret key. Read the source code and you will understand.

Maybe a future invention? Conditioned multi-sig?

I think, you mean smart contracts. They are already working on it ;)
e.g. https://www.ethereum.org/

lol thats not doing anything.

There are smartcontracting multisig wallets for this scenario  :) joint account between you and your kids/wife each has a private key but none can remove funds without atleast 2 of the keys.

I am new to smartcontracting but lets assume i set up a contract for upon my death/ill health the other 2 private keys will activate and release the coins without the need of mine.

I am still learning but  take a look at BitHalo. BlackHalo very interesting what can be done, take care and stay ALIVE  ;)

That is what LIFE INSURANCE is for and it will pay out way more than any BTC you have (least 99.9% of people and anyone in this thread).

What would that do? unless you leave it writen somewhere that you want to give your BTC to someone else, then the BTC are lost.

Really??
What life insurance name who accept bitcoin? They have a big potential to scam?

Will a paper wallet kept alongside the family gold (so only the next of kin sees it) solve this problem ?

Not if somebody steals your gold(and your paper wallet) ;)

Being close to broke isn't fun, but at least I don't have to worry about anything important being lost or stolen.  :)
Still hoping to have this "problem" someday.

You could also consider it like this:

It's a non-issue. If the money is lost, the money is lost. It's not as big of a deal as you might imagine because you can always add more decimal places to bitcoin. So basically losing bitcoin would just make existing bitcoin more valuable. Losing them is no one's loss really (except the guy who lost them)-- It's just everyone else's gain (in the form of deflation due to the lost coins).

I don't think it needs a solution. If we couldn't add more decimal places then we might need to be concerned with preserving the money supply, but because we can add more decimal places, it's not that big of a deal. And if you want your family to have access to your bitcoins in the event of your death, then make a will with multisignature keys given to the right people.

It is up to each Bitcoin user to provide the necessary info to a realtive or legal appointed person to access your wallet in the event of a death.
There is no difference with this or any info needed to access your regular bank account.

It's simple, give your all info about bitcoin to any of your family member or partner you trust most.And the better is write a note all of the process of bitcoin and keep it in a secure place.

Print it and put it in a safe. They will excavate it on your death by means of brutal physical power.

dead man switch has also been discussed - it would be activated if there is no activity(outgoing transactions?) for some amount of time...

I use Nxt, and my Nxt priv. key is on the desk next to me.
A solution to this problem that is safer than my piece of paper is Multisig; you could require both your family, a lawyer, etc. to approve a transaction in order to get have the support them.

With NXT you have a single passphrase(brainwallet) as a login right?
You would actually have to split the passphrase and give the different parts to the family and the layer :)

I was thinking about this with afriend quite some time ago. It would work like this: Each week/month/X period of time, you would have to do something "proof-of-alive" like answer and automated message and such, if not, then some saved information will be sent to anyone that you wanted to know that stuff.

Let's put it simply. I haven't planned anything yet. My BTC would be definitely lost if I die tonight.

lol. haha
Could be an option but in my case I think that you can put it into your will at a notary as someone said or give all the information/pass to use it to family.

I'm going to thing about it, dunno what to do :D

the family would have to be educated about what bitcoin is first in case either the lawyer dies or he scams the bitcoins which maybe worth several million doillars in say ,a decade from now .........

you need to make your family aware of btc,wallets and passphrases imo b4 its too late

a paper copy and instructions  in a sealed envelope in a  sd box  wouldnt hurt either  in case they forget or lose any part of the info required to "spend" the btc ........

I guess we keep our family gold in a bank locker; maybe the bigger guys keep it in trustworthy vaults. Point is whoever receives your family gold gets the bitcoins too. And most (if not all) of the time the family gold passes into deserving hands.

I have made special provisions for my private keys to be given to my next of kin

Good thread, same as inlog codes for all sorts of sites, am going to sit down with my wife sometime and explain everything ;D

assume that bad-misfortunes bitcoin is really dead at all.

People want a replacement Bitcoin. We can not close our eyes as well. There are thousands of altcoim, ready to replace bitcoin anytime.

One falls and a thousand spring up.

Where is worried?

You still invest too, right ??

If you are someone who is in awe of the implementation .cryptocoin plus love to see opportunities. This is certainly such a de ja vu, provided you already have experience of the failure of bitcoin.

What if your email gets compromised and they steal your drive and bitcoins on it?

what if the email gets eaten by spam filter and recipient never recieves it
all is left is a useless pendrive ......you need something better to guarantee reliability

i would keep a copy of it on a flash drive and have an attorney (with a 10 percent cut if he/she would take bitcoins or other assets ) handle it to who ever you want to pass it to.   make sure its worth it..     if not would it just get lost and would it ever be used?? can it be reprinted (mined) again if not used after a while?? 

There would happen nothing.  :o Never thought about it. I don't have that much but it's something the think about.

I think nothing :)
Nobody can use it, sell or cash out without your login/access info.
any way, it's always smart move to share your important info with someone you trust, your partner, family member etc. so that they can inherit your funds if something happen to you.

Isn't it better to include the flashdrive with your will when you are becoming old and not feeling very well any more?

If you're old or not well and you're on the stage when you starting to think what happens after you die, then there's plenty of actions you can take. But this thread is more about the solutions that prevent losing BTC in case of sudden, unexpected death.