How many coins will be lost due to people dying?

[AsymmetricInformation]

All of you have complete overthought this! It is a difficult problem indeed with a clear solution.

I'm pleased to enlighten you all that big S himself put in the solution for us all to use, in a rare and often-overlooked feature of Bitcoin called nLockTime.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5783/transactions-with-a-wait-time-using-nlocktime

What do you do?

1] Take your wallet ("wallet A"), and make a wallet for your heir(s) ("wallet B").

2] A has all your N coins, B has 0 coins.

3] Sign a transaction sending all your coins from A to B (or maybe 100 transactions with N/100 coins to 100 B address, whatever, you get the idea: you are giving your money away). Use nLockTime for the block occurring ~1 year from now. You keep your coins (for now) despite broadcasting these transactions.

4] NEXT YEAR: When that block rolls around, if you are still alive move all of your coins to a new wallet ('A prime' or whatever), and redo step 3 with transactions for NEXT year. The transactions you originally wrote in 3 will all expire and do nothing. (Dont forget to do this or your heirs will collect early)!

5] Eventually you die, and your heirs wait for the transaction to ultimately go through. Maximum possible wait time: one year in this case, but potentially anything you want.

[TheButterZone]

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?

There are dog tag creators at some Walmarts and pet stores, can also order them online. Though putting a private key in the clear would be asking for it to be swept if archives are kept of what was put on the dog tags. If you order them one at a time from separate sources instead of as a pair at once, you can split the key.

You could also split the key on tats. One tat by one artist just above your genitalia, tats by another artist on your buttcheeks, so each one doesn't see the others' work. Just gotta trust your sexual partners, then.

[13Charlie]

You could also split the key on tats. One tat by one artist just above your genitalia, tats by another artist on your buttcheeks, so each one doesn't see the others' work. Just gotta trust your sexual partners, then.

LOL . . Great ideas but there are a few holes in you plan. What if you gt a crooked-bitcoin-hoarding-mortician? What if you make porn?

[TheButterZone]

You could also split the key on tats. One tat by one artist just above your genitalia, tats by another artist on your buttcheeks, so each one doesn't see the others' work. Just gotta trust your sexual partners, then.

LOL . . Great ideas but there are a few holes in you plan. What if you gt a crooked-bitcoin-hoarding-mortician? What if you make porn?

Make it known to your survivors/executor that they need to be present as your corpse is first looked at naked, and to be ready to sweep the key.

Porn? Flesh-colored tape.

[Dabs]

There are email services that check if there is activity or if you have logged on, then if nothing has happened in 3 or 6 months, assume that you are dead, and then email your beneficiaries.

Basically, an online dead man's switch. You can make a program that lives on a server do this.

I even read of someone who has a cron job or daemon or other software continually watch his facebook and twitter, and it will assume the owner is dead if there is no activity in 6 months.

The time delay is user configurable, I think a year is ok. I mean, what if you just got ship wrecked for a couple hundred days. You'd certainly need the coins if you are still alive when you get back to civilization.

[Zomdifros]

Simply put your private keys in a Truecrypt container and protect it with Shamir's Secret Algorithm. Remember one key, write down a second key on paper and put the third key in your testament. You only need two out of three keys to access your wallet, so you always have access yourself but in case of death your family can use the key from the testament together with the key on paper to recover your wallet.
 
In case the paper key is destroyed at the time of your death, have a copy of this key in a safe in a bank somewhere (your family has access to this safe). Of course it would technically still be possible for your family to steal your paper key and somehow gain access to the key in your testament, but that would be theft and you could sue them. If you cannot trust your family enough to accept this risk, you should consider not leaving your wealth to your family at all.

[gollum]

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?

Thats why people should store their bitcoins at MtGox so they never lose their bitcoin since MtGox is more or less a bank.

[rebroad]

This sounds good. Is there any way to determine which of the 10 pieces were used for the recovery when the bitcoins are spent? Ideally I'd like a solution where I can set 1 key that can be used to spend them, and another 3 keys, two of which need to be used together to spend them, and I'd like it to be determinable from the blockchain which of the keys were used to spend them. Is this possible?

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).

[13Charlie]

This sounds good. Is there any way to determine which of the 10 pieces were used for the recovery when the bitcoins are spent? Ideally I'd like a solution where I can set 1 key that can be used to spend them, and another 3 keys, two of which need to be used together to spend them, and I'd like it to be determinable from the blockchain which of the keys were used to spend them. Is this possible?

There will be plenty of options once all of the features have been implemented. Not sure of yours exactly, But I'm sure you'll find something that works for you.
Check out this thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139625.0

[RodeoX]

I thought about this before. My countermeasure is to store a text file with instructions about how to use the wallet.dat file on the same USB drive. I also have shown my wife what to do.

[13Charlie]

I thought about this before. My countermeasure is to store a text file with instructions about how to use the wallet.dat file on the same USB drive. I also have shown my wife what to do.

I agree with this statement from earlier. Hardware may be obsolete when it is that time.
Also please use multiple thumb drives because it may just die before you use it. Electronics are not perfect forever.

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.

[Amitabh S]

Thats why people should store their bitcoins at MtGox so they never lose their bitcoin since MtGox is more or less a bank.

Not a bad solution until something better comes along.

The features are already in Bitcoin and people are already developing a solution to that for the future.  It is called a "dead man's switch" and uses "pay 2 script hash."  If your coins are dormant for a period of time they can be automatically transferred after a period of time using a time lock transaction but the mining protocol would need to be able to process these.

Will this apply to ALL dormant bitcoins or only those that have specifically been "time-locked"?

[stevegee58]

The broader question is "what happens to bitcoin as coins inevitably leak away irrecoverably due to lost wallets, forgotten passwords, incorrect destination address, etc"

Due to this bigger issue, the amount of circulating BTC will constantly decrease over time.  What effect will this have?

[wachtwoord]

The broader question is "what happens to bitcoin as coins inevitably leak away irrecoverably due to lost wallets, forgotten passwords, incorrect destination address, etc"

Due to this bigger issue, the amount of circulating BTC will constantly decrease over time.  What effect will this have?

A very very good one. Kinda the opposite of fiat

[MarlboroMan]

I love the idea of making a puzzle and giving family members parts of the puzzle and you need all of them to open the wallet.

[Evolvex]

Well, you can add 0.1btc lost to someone dying, a close friend of mine "past" not long ago, he had exactly 0.1btc

[13Charlie]

Due to this bigger issue, the amount of circulating BTC will constantly decrease over time.  What effect will this have?

It will make my coins more valuable. So please, everyone, loose as many coins as you can.

[arklan]

i'm thinking of taking a key pair and turning it to gibberish through my own symbology and having the result engraved into a bit of metal or such... or, you know... just buying a cassacius coin...

[Mosper]

A better question is how many people are going to die because of bitcoin crashing the next time? I imagine those people buying hundreds-thousands of coins at 50+ dollars are going to up suicide rate in their respective locations a good bit.

[Amitabh S]

A better question is how many people are going to die because of bitcoin crashing the next time? I imagine those people buying hundreds-thousands of coins at 50+ dollars are going to up suicide rate in their respective locations a good bit.

And hopefully some coins be lost because of that, thereby causing the price to soar up, defeating the very purpuse they died for.