Bitcoin Forum

Hi there everyone,
This is a rather old topic...
The CEO of QuadridaCX died who was the only one to know the secret keys for the cold wallets of the exchange. Yeah, I know some people are saying it's a fake death and it was just an exit scam, but I kept thinking, what if I die today and all my crypto holdings are theoretically locked forever? And it's certain that there are people who are dead now who were holding crypto and nobody knew how to access them. These crypto assets will never be in circulation again... So how can we prevent this from happening? Is it alarming or not? Will there be any solutions in near future?

Thanks in advance.

Can MultiSig be a solution to this?
Lost coins are good for people who have access to their coins, it doesn't necessarily mean that people want more coin get lost.

“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” said by Satoshi.

Yes is right and security advisable not to totally trust someone.
But we can have that special person that we trust spouse, relation e.t.c that we can reveal some information to.
Well if that's to hard to do you can have your password included into your will or diary and letting your family know its there

Yes it can and most exchange uses it already. also we have verified and trusted companies that specializes in handling private key to cold wallet of exchanges so their service can be employed to prevent another case of QuadridaCX exchange.


There's a possible solution for centralized exchange and wallet providers, they could provide an online form for next of kin when signing up on their site, in case of death the next of kin could apply for transfer of ownership after passing some strict KYC verification process. but i think the only possible solution to decentralized service providers will be individual using multisig wallets.

It is not alarming, you can do it in the most conventional way by educating your relatives beginning with the first degree.

Much better if you have kids or wife, giving them instructions on how to claim your crypto's.

I would not consider an exchange who doesn't use multisig a real exchange. If they are serious about security there is no other way but to have a cold wallet with multi sig capabilities. For example, 3 out of 5 signatures. So if someone dies or is unavailable the others can still process payments.

Sorry bit macabre, but there are some websites out there, eg, ifidie.org, after.me etc, that can send emails to loved ones after your death. In these emails you can include anything you want including passwords and codes, but probably it would be best to educate the loved ones beforehand.I have done this with my wife and vice versa.
PS How secure/ encrypted these sites are, I m really not sure

This should not be a topic for much debate,if you feel the need to educate someone about your investments then go ahead to do so, it's best to do so, because anything can happen at any time.
You can tell either wife,kids,mum,dad, anyone you trust so much.
If you do not trust anyone that much to do so, use exchanges that could send mails after your demise,setting up all informations on it

I already taught my son and my wife on how to use my private  keys if theres a bad thing that happened to me,  but the only alarming is the people who knows what im doing and if theres something happened to me theyre gonna steal my private keys that was in my phone and my wifes phone for backup.

That's why it's most advice to store your private key off the internet or off any device that can be remotely access. I suggest you store it on a flash drive or on papper and keep a backup somewhere else. Also you can store the private keys in parts that's if you're storing on papper. I divided mine into 3 parts and stored each part on different important documents of mine and stored backup on flash in 3 different folders.

Don't use my last suggestion if you know you're the type that forgets easily. Am not, It works fine for me that's why I use it.

There is no fundamental problem. The fate of your holdings are entirely in your own hands. There are a variety of options from time locking to keeping details with a lawyer.

My opinion about this is to store a back up of the crypto informations and educate (example: your wife, children, brother, sister, or your parents about your crypto that is been stored safely by you if there is something bad happen to you and your crypto can still be claimed by your family. You = entrusted your crypto to your = family.

Crypto in general is not safe, but we are still here investing and trusting it because we know in the future it will be safe.
It's normal to see this kind of news since we are in the early stage now, but this crypto space will get developed and proper regulation will be applied.
Some exchanges gets hack or even the owner can scam traders or investors and we need the government to protect us.

The system is fix, we cannot change that it's decentralized and the supply is fixed, so we need to take care of our coins.
More problem like losing the code or password might be bad but in some way it's also good as it reduce the supply which would result to price increase.


You should be careful in sharing your private key, only share it to people you trust.
My case, I'm still the one who knows it but I'll likely let my wife know at the right time.

Got a lot of ideas from you guys, thank you! I hope there will be a better way to handle these kind of situations.
Thanks to you all! <3

Mashfiqun, fake death of that CEO or not, it does not really matter because it was said countless times that if you not own your private keys, you do not own anything. Giving trust to any crypto exchange is not a clever decision, they are for trading, not for holding coins.

Your second question represents a problem for most of those who own cryptocurrency, and there is no simple solution. In my opinion everyone needs to evaluate their own situation, and then decide which steps to take.

Some will say that backup should be in bank safe deposit box, and in case of user death bank will return the contents of the safe to family members or or individual member of the family named in the will. Second option is to split backup (seed words) with instructions, and give each member of the family one part. The bad side of this is the possibility of misuse, if all family members decide to take the inheritance before owner dies.

I personally keep my BTC in different wallets that are stored in different places, including but not limited to bank deposit boxes and also a bit in my house as well. There's really no perfect way to store BTC in the end, but you should always be keeping coins in a wallet where you fully control the private keys. Only keep as much as you're actively trading on an exchange, and deposit and withdraw as needed. Fees are still a bit high on exchanges, though, so withdrawing in chunks is a good idea if you're trying to minimize fees. I'm still working out how my coins would be handled in the unfortunate event that I die, though, as there's only a very limited number of people I would trust with knowing the location of my stored BTC and how to use the keys.

I wouldn't complicate things too much. Are you married? Do you trust your wife, your kids, parents or other family members? Show them where they can find the private keys to your wallets or the needed passwords, pin numbers in case something happens to you. No need to have it go through a lawyer, timelock or other mechanisms. If you don't trust those closest to you and think you will get screwed over by them, then you shouldn't care what will happen to your investments either.

Explain to me why Cryptocurrency, in general, isn't safe? what kind of regulation? we need the government? Honestly, your post is triggering me.

Cryptocurrency in term of technical is safe that is fact, it is unhackable. The problem is the user, not the technology, Most of us so dumb that can't even read proper documentation or having a damn common sense. So they are all easily get fooled, and loss their wallers or private keys.

The solution of centralized exchange getting hacked, and the major problem of cryptocurrencies isn't could be fixed by governments.  I mean Bitcoin is known to be technically trustless and decentralized, why the F you want governments to protect us?. Is Bitcoin are a joke to you?

I will still prefer timelock or dead man switch.

It is not like that I am not trusting but I do not want to expose my private key to anybody else. Actually I will like to create a single wallet and private key for her and multiple wallet for me. All will transfer their balance on different year to that wallet.

(I think Social engineering is more dangerous than Phishing/viruses)

You don't need to give her access to it now while you are alive and healthy. Just tell her how and where she can find the needed information in case something bad happens to you. You will still remain in possession of the access data - she just knows where it is. In the unlikely event of... 

I'll probably end up leaving the information to my parents as I'm still pretty young and perhaps with my brother(s) and other relatives as well. I've been screwed over by some of my relatives in the past before, but I won't show any one of them all the places where I'm stashing my BTC away. You're right though, I was definitely overthinking this. Thanks for the tip.

Yes its safe if you know what your doing, in my case ive printed out my private keys into a paper with 3 copies and put it in different places in our house and  only my wife knows where ive put them.

Timelock is only reliable solution, put funds with timelock on address that will allow spend them in 5 years. Mark that date in callendar. If you are still alive then, send funds to new address again with 5 years timelock.
You can keep going like that until you die :P
Only reliable source because lawyers and "trusted" people can fail you.

Problem is only when 3rd persona will know ur private key and will spend this funds faster than you could transfer it to new 5 years timelock address  ??? >:(. Still a lot safer than trusting lawyer/other person.

@Velkro
Who will inherit the bitcoins in the end? Will they go to the same person you don't trust in the first place?

The Timelock option is not wrong but I have heard many times that users don't trust those closest to them with their possessions. That is the part that I don't understand. Worrying about how our beloved ones will get our bitcoins but not trusting them with out money while we are still alive.

My wife knows where to find the information to access my digital possessions in case something happens to me. And my sister knows what to do in case something happens to the both of us.

And I don't understand why the world is like this. We can trust third parties by using their services but can not trust our own people.
Whatever the reasons are, I find this typically unfair.  ;D

Hey i can understand this as it's a sensitive topic, it's same when a person dies and doesn't tell his family where he kept his fiat stashed. I feel in the case of Bitcoins there's no way to recover those coins, and those are permanently out of circulation. While it's bad for a person's family not being able to access his coins, if you see for others it's a boon as it'll limit the total number of coins in circulation and increase it's value. I have made a list of my holdings with my lawyer, and my family has a copy of it too in case anything ever happens to me so you can do the same.

In my view, it depends on your Crypto wallet, and also to do with the hardware wallet IF you are using, as that gives the security. I use Coinbase, which I feel is HIGHLY safe and secure.

But of course, I am also using Hardware Wallet (https://cryptolinks.com/hardware-wallet), as I feel it’s important to secure yourself IF you have large amount of Cryptos. But it is important to get the selection right when it comes to Hardware Wallet, as this is something that could make a big difference.

Don't let third parties hold your coins, always withdraw to your own wallet(s) when finished trading. There's ALWAYS a risk that something will happen and you won't be able to access your funds when you let other people store your coins. And when you manage your wallets yourself, you can set extra security and keep seeds/privatekeys safe ;)


And who knows, maybe he trusted other people with passwords and such, but they might have seen their chance to act like they don't know shit.. We'll probably never know, till funds start moving one day.

To me crypto in general is not safe. I must argue more better security as exchange hack wind up normal. I prefer the most legitimate, demonstrated, secure spot to store my coins. There's always a way an exchange could get compromised. The computer could breaks, USBs gets lost such issue needs to get attention.

Don't know if this is OTT but I have:

A VM that contains KeyPass (locked)
Which is then encrypted and stored via Veracrypt
I then copy those Veracrypt files to 3 different USBs.

I have different passwords to unlock all layers, which consist of a gibberish of key bashing patterns that I have somehow remembered :p

I think every exchange could be hacked sooner or later. Coinbase has access to your private keys. So I can't call it secure I guess.
And those hacking news are going out considerably frequently. In these two months of 2019, some reputed exchanges got hacked. I am really concerned now about exchange hacking and crypto security.

Not really. For centralized crypto exchanges there is always a counterparty risk that's why it's better to use margin trading and leverage for trading. You will pay fees for the borrowed funds but you will decrease the lost in case the worst happens.

For decentralized exchange, normaly you should be able to get access to your funds at any moment.

If you are not trading at all you'd better keep your funds on a cold wallet.