If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he dies one day.................

[Adbitco]

That's just a hypothetical situation but such thing has already happened in real when someone threw his computer hard drive containing million of dollars worth of bitcoins. In the hypothetical situation presented here there are still chances of recovering those bitcoins if someone in his family by chance happen to find the access to the wallet containing those bitcoins but if they can't then the coins are lost forever.

[Techie5879]

Well, the bitcoins will be lost forever if the password is not discovered. They will stay in that address forever (atleast until bitcoin ceases existing), and the circulation and number of bitcoins will decrease a fair amount. Thus, the price will have a steep hike I guess, due to lessening in the number of bitcoins in circulation.

Yes, such a situation has already happened, not once, but numerous times, like James Howells, who threw out a hard drive with 7500 bitcoins in it.
If someone recovers them, the price starts to rise steadily again, but anyway, due to the 'burning' of the bitcoins, the price will increase, in my opinion.

[ardentvolcanoes]

If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he die one day and no body can hack his Bitcoin wallet than what will happen with those Bitcoin? Considering this situation is this possible that Bitcoin will not exists for use in the world any day since limited numbers of Bitcoin can be generated?

What is your thought on this?

of course those coin will be lost forever and no one can ever recover his coins unless the person that we are talking about has left a back up of his wallet as well as the private key or any thing you need in order to access his wallet. a millions of bitcoin has a great worth so i don't think that he will never backup his wallet.

[bitbunnny]

If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he die one day and no body can hack his Bitcoin wallet than what will happen with those Bitcoin? Considering this situation is this possible that Bitcoin will not exists for use in the world any day since limited numbers of Bitcoin can be generated?

What is your thought on this?

of course those coin will be lost forever and no one can ever recover his coins unless the person that we are talking about has left a back up of his wallet as well as the private key or any thing you need in order to access his wallet. a millions of bitcoin has a great worth so i don't think that he will never backup his wallet.

This might be the truth, the coins could be lost forever. But what if this person had some trusted person or member of the family who new the private key and wallet details? Then this person could inherit these coins in some way and use them further. In theory this is possible and thus coins wouldn't be lost.

[Taki]

That is the same story as with people's profiles on Facebook or Twitter for example. A human died and his profile still lives. Do such social networks make something with profiles not used for years? Does anyone knows something about it? And this million of bitcoin just going to be lost if sites with online wallet at will not provide some politic for not used wallets for years.

[Script3d]

If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he die one day and no body can hack his Bitcoin wallet than what will happen with those Bitcoin? Considering this situation is this possible that Bitcoin will not exists for use in the world any day since limited numbers of Bitcoin can be generated?

What is your thought on this?

lol, the coin will be lost forever... unless, some lucky^lucky^lucky person one day installed his bitcoin wallet and found that his wallet contains millions of bitcoin. Theoretical this is possible, but the chances would be so small that practically it will never happen.

i dont think you can download someone's wallet and i think its not possible also but if you have the private key you have full control to someone's bitcoin wallet. and if someone doesnt have his private key the millions of bitcoin will be there stuck forever.

[mrkevio]

If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he die one day and no body can hack his Bitcoin wallet than what will happen with those Bitcoin? Considering this situation is this possible that Bitcoin will not exists for use in the world any day since limited numbers of Bitcoin can be generated?

What is your thought on this?

didn't you know bitcoin could be used in the afterlife? they have miners there too

but seriously if someone has 1 million bitcoin worth 750,000,000 USD don't you think he will think of something before he dies?

and as always bitcoin is just code and if someday in 20-50 years from now we feel like there are too many coins lost (burnt,...) that 21 mil cap is not enough there are a couple of things that can change like we can increase the cap or we can even go smaller than 1 satoshi if price was high enough but all of these need a real problem in the very far far future.

Do you know when you're going to die? You don't. He could die before he would even think of it in a crash or any other way. If he would die and nobody would have his passwords, these Bitcoins will just not exist anymore. If 10.000.000BTC would be lost by somebody, they would just sit there in the wallets and nothing would happen to them. This is why saving is good in case the price rises but at the same time it's bad because if everyone would save waiting for a price increase, 0 Bitcoins would be in circulation.

[Junko]

Wouldn't it just be the same thing as if someone just continued to hodl/hoard that amount of coins indefinitely without ever planning on spending them? For instance, hypothetically, someone inherited millions of bitcoins from a hodler/hoarder and then they themselves continued to hodl/hoard without ever spending and then when they died, they passed the same coins onto a hodler/hoarder and so on and so on...

[vasrasus]

That is the same story as with people's profiles on Facebook or Twitter for example. A human died and his profile still lives. Do such social networks make something with profiles not used for years? Does anyone knows something about it? And this million of bitcoin just going to be lost if sites with online wallet at will not provide some politic for not used wallets for years.

Maybe when the system needs to shut down that would be the only time the access will gone. I doubt if people cant even said their password to the person they love probably some of those who knew how big their money will still think to rely their codes to the person they trusted just in case of emergency.

[Tanic]

There is only one way - to invite some hacker and to give him that computer that person used to he try to find keys and passwords. I think such way is pretty possible.

[BigBoom3599]

If somebody with a million Bitcoins would die, I'd probably be happy

The supply would drop by quite a bit and cause the price to surge hopefully.

Of course, that's only if his private keys were lost. If he managed to pass his private keys on, than none of this would happen (unfortunately). And if you have a million bitcoins, I'm sure you have figured out a lot of plans in case of a disaster/death.

[Daniel91]

There is only one way - to invite some hacker and to give him that computer that person used to he try to find keys and passwords. I think such way is pretty possible.

Interesting idea but in the most cases, people around this person will have no idea about his Bitcoin.
Other financial assets of any person, are always recorded somewhere, and when person passed away, court, public notary or some other legal representative, will find out how much financial assets (money, houses, cars etc.) this person had and who should inherit it, according to the law.
Bitcoin is not financial asset, so nobody can inherit it.
In fact, Bitcoin is virtual and connected to the online or offline wallet, not the person.
So, if this person didn't trust anybody, and didn't share login info from the wallet, those bTC funds will be lost.

[nasipadang]

If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he die one day and no body can hack his Bitcoin wallet than what will happen with those Bitcoin? Considering this situation is this possible that Bitcoin will not exists for use in the world any day since limited numbers of Bitcoin can be generated?

What is your thought on this?

if he has that much Bitcoins maybe he was already thinking about what he would do when he dies later as give all bitcoin to family or something like that

[buwaytress]

There already has been a lot of lost bitcoin and documented instances where people have also accidentally lost their stored bitcoins.

Current understanding simply means these are lost forever but theoretically all these private keys could be cracked with enough processing power.

Perhaps when the miners have next to no blocks left to find, some will turn hashpower to cracking these.

[stark101]

If a person has millions of bitcoins and he dies one day well theres is nothing we can do. His/her bitcoin will be kept to his wallet and no one can get it. His/her bitcoin will lose forever and no can used it even his/her family. But in my opinion, people in this kind of situation knows already what he/she need to do so that his/her bitcoins will be used to the people that are good in bitcoin or even to his/her family.

[Net1zen]

There are several methods how to leave inheritance in Bitcoin secure way. From dead-man-switch to cryptosteel in the basement's chest.  

Can keep coins in BIP39 HP wallet, under different pathprases.
Seed and instructions can be left in the accessible place for all heirs, but dedicated individual passes distributed by a notary/lawyer after owners death, based on bequest.

[QuestionAuthority]

This topic made me think of a way for the U.S. Government to eliminate Bitcoin someday if they consider it a national security threat. It would be best if this were done in seven years after most of the bitcoins are mined. They can start by criminalizing its use in Murrica. Then, because they are so wonderful and love us, create a purchase program allowing anyone holding illegal Bitcoins to sell them to the govt for a fixed cheap price. The govt takes those illegal nasty bitcoins and dumps them on the international market effectively crashing it down to nothing. Then they slowly start buying bitcoins from any and all sellers, burning every one they purchase from that moment forward until they've burned so many that it doesn't matter what's left.

You might think the U. S. government doesn't have enough extra money to do that. Remember, this is the government that spends $1.4 million dollars an HOUR for foreign military assistance and $4 million dollars an HOUR to blow up shit in Afghanistan.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

[ged00u]

Well, I don't know what's gonna happen then but I pretty sure that it would be quite tricky for anyone who wants to hack this wallet.  But I do think there will be some possibility for the case that one person generates a new wallet and somehow that wallet has the same private key with this one to happen because this has already happened to a guy in this forum.

[calkob]

If a person has millions of Bitcoin and he die one day and no body can hack his Bitcoin wallet than what will happen with those Bitcoin? Considering this situation is this possible that Bitcoin will not exists for use in the world any day since limited numbers of Bitcoin can be generated?

What is your thought on this?

His family better hope that he left the private keys somewhere that at least they can find, or if he has encrypted the keys some needs to know the password.  I thought about this myself recently when setting up encrypted paper wallets,  i have hide my password and told my son where to find should anything happen to me.

[bamboylee]

Wouldn't it just be the same thing as if someone just continued to hodl/hoard that amount of coins indefinitely without ever planning on spending them? For instance, hypothetically, someone inherited millions of bitcoins from a hodler/hoarder and then they themselves continued to hodl/hoard without ever spending and then when they died, they passed the same coins onto a hodler/hoarder and so on and so on...

Hodler still have access to his coins and can dump anytime. Dead person does not and basically the coins are lost forever.