How many coins will be lost due to people dying?

[Amitabh S]

Many keep their bitcoins so secure that only they can access them, without anticipating that they might one day die and take their bitcoins with them.

What are your plans for your coins after you die? How do you plan to make them (un)recoverable?

[Kettenmonster]

Put whatever it takes into your last will and testament, nothing new so far.

[13Charlie]

How do you plan to make them (un) recoverable?

Armory has (or will have soon) an awesome feature built into the paper backup system that allows an M of N recovery. Fully customize-able.
I plan to print 10 sheets of paper that each have a piece of the puzzle to recover my cold storage wallet. It will require 7 pieces of the original 10 to recover the wallet.
6 of them get distributed to family and friends with instructions to hold onto them until I die.
4 of them are to be in the will itself, this way, the other 6 can never do anything before I actually die (not that I couldn't trust those people).

[nwbitcoin]

How do you plan to make them (un) recoverable?

Armory has (or will have soon) an awesome feature built into the paper backup system that allows an M of N recovery. Fully customize-able.
I plan to print 10 sheets of paper that each have a piece of the puzzle to recover my cold storage wallet. It will require 7 pieces of the original 10 to recover the wallet.
6 of them get distributed to family and friends with instructions to hold onto them until I die.
4 of them are to be in the will itself, this way, the other 6 can never do anything before I actually die (not that I couldn't trust those people).

That's a neat idea.
It could be used with all your important logins.  Maybe another use for your wallet?

[vdragon]

Many keep their bitcoins so secure that only they can access them, without anticipating that they might one day die and take their bitcoins with them.

What are your plans for your coins after you die? How do you plan to make them (un)recoverable?

  I am sure that someone will come to a solution like that the coins that have been dormant for 3 years or so, can be mined again, or distributed somehow. Not sure, just a thought

[Elwar]

I was wondering about this myself. I am in Afghanistan and have to consider these things.

[Puppet]

Funny you mention this. I just emailed an encrypted copy of my wallet.dat to my family members. I encrypted it with a truecrypt container protected by an enormous password thats composed of a lot of things only my family members would all know, or be able to find out, like old phone numbers, old car license plates, my "social security number", bank account number and other stuff. I wrote the explanation how to create the password in a text document I attached with the mail. So should something happen to me, they should be able puzzle together the password of the truecrypt container, which contains the wallet.dat plus a text file with the bitcoin wallet password.

Im sure there are better ways to go about, but this was good enough for me. Its possible for them to recover my coins, and damn near impossible for a random hacker.

[13Charlie]

  I am sure that someone will come to a solution like that the coins that have been dormant for 3 years or so, can be mined again, or distributed somehow. Not sure, just a thought

Terrible idea, what if my life savings coins are dormant for for 30 years because I'm saving them?
If some coins disappear forever, the other ones get more valuable. Plus, coins are divisible into 100,000,000 units each. There are plenty of coins in circulation, they do not need to be re-mined.

[bg002h]

The OP makes a good point. I think I need a plan. Ya never know, my stash might be very valuable someday. It would be a shame to have it lost with my brain.

[mjc]

Commit my Private keys to memory and when I reincarnate I can claim them.  :-)

[veteranBtc]

What if 1 btc will value 1000$, just add your coins to your testament.
I think that will make your children happpy
Jokin' 

[vdragon]

It was just an idea, as I said I dont know too much of behind the scenes things

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

How do you plan to make them (un) recoverable?

Armory has (or will have soon) an awesome feature built into the paper backup system that allows an M of N recovery. Fully customize-able.
I plan to print 10 sheets of paper that each have a piece of the puzzle to recover my cold storage wallet. It will require 7 pieces of the original 10 to recover the wallet.
6 of them get distributed to family and friends with instructions to hold onto them until I die.
4 of them are to be in the will itself, this way, the other 6 can never do anything before I actually die (not that I couldn't trust those people).

Seems pretty complicated.

Wouldn't it be easier to create a RAR archive containing the wallet with enough repair/recovery data, and give only part of the data to your family ?

With proper balancement of amount of recovery data, the same thing could be achieved.

[GGGGG]

I was wondering about this myself. I am in Afghanistan and have to consider these things.

Is it true that if you die while in the service, the military will return your dog tags to your loved ones? Perhaps you could get a private key engraved onto a dog tag and carry it with you, and let your family know how to use it in the event of your death. Does the military even do dog tags anymore?

[tvbcof]

I just put some instructions along with the encryption passwords for my (many) wallet files in my safe deposit box.  My family knows there is enough value there to have incentive figure out what these instructions mean.

I'm getting close to wanting to sell one wallet so I need to go back to the safe deposit box to get the pass-phrase.  At that time I'll adjust the instructions to make sure the fam only gives one wallet at a time to a professional to open up if they choose to re-coup the value that way (it being mildly complex since I use OpenSSL in native form for encryption.)  I thought of this failure mode only recently.

[ABitBack]

Many keep their bitcoins so secure that only they can access them, without anticipating that they might one day die and take their bitcoins with them.

What are your plans for your coins after you die? How do you plan to make them (un)recoverable?

  I am sure that someone will come to a solution like that the coins that have been dormant for 3 years or so, can be mined again, or distributed somehow. Not sure, just a thought

I have money in account that have not had any activity in the past 3 years. 3 years isn't long, I would be pissed if they were to revert back into mineable bitcoins.

[Elwar]

I was wondering about this myself. I am in Afghanistan and have to consider these things.

Is it true that if you die while in the service, the military will return your dog tags to your loved ones? Perhaps you could get a private key engraved onto a dog tag and carry it with you, and let your family know how to use it in the event of your death. Does the military even do dog tags anymore?

I am not in the service. They did give me dog tags the last time I came out here but not this time.

Perhaps engraving the cross around my neck could work. And if someone stole it from me I could immediately rush to a computer and move my BTC.

Though out here I would probably die from a missile or mortar round...

[Richy_T]

I once considered creating a service which would provide time-locks. Request a public key and at some time in the future the corresponding private key would be made public. Encrypt what you want and leave it wherever public you want. Of course, you have to do some management to re-encrypt things if you're using it as a dead-man's switch but the principle is sound.

After a little consideration though, I decided that the risk from those who wanted private keys released ahead of time just wouldn't be worth it.

[13Charlie]

How do you plan to make them (un) recoverable?

Armory has (or will have soon) an awesome feature built into the paper backup system that allows an M of N recovery. Fully customize-able.
I plan to print 10 sheets of paper that each have a piece of the puzzle to recover my cold storage wallet. It will require 7 pieces of the original 10 to recover the wallet.
6 of them get distributed to family and friends with instructions to hold onto them until I die.
4 of them are to be in the will itself, this way, the other 6 can never do anything before I actually die (not that I couldn't trust those people).

Seems pretty complicated.

Wouldn't it be easier to create a RAR archive containing the wallet with enough repair/recovery data, and give only part of the data to your family ?

You are correct, this is more complicated than necessary (for most). But for me, it will provide a little more piece of mind. As they say, to each his own, and the OP asked about how we planned for this event. This is how I am planning.

[fcmatt]

If enough time goes by any solution that involves hardware might be so obsolete that a museum would have to get involved to read the data. If i gave you five inch floppy i bet many here would be like wtf is that. Just thinking out loud.