Bitcoin and Heritage

[wh04m1]

Normally, after the person is kill, the wealth remains with the family. It is easy to share assets such as houses and cars. But what if the property of the person is bitcoin? What if the deceased person is not saying the seed words?

What solution can be applied to this?

[USA]

Solution is earning with you own head instead of waiting when your family member will die.
You will get the bitcoins only if you will know private key or seed words.

[danherbias07]

Solution is earning with you own head instead of waiting when your family member will die.
You will get the bitcoins only if you will know private key or seed words.

That is a little harsh. He is just asking.

You need something like a clue maybe. That is one hell of a hard problem. Now that I thought of it maybe I need to leave some notes for my wife in case that happen. Thank you for reminding that.
I dont think there is a way and that is also one more reason why bitcoin will be rare in the future.

[shamzblueworld]

So I guess the answer is everyone must left some clues or even tell someone closed to them about their bitcoin wealth and how to access it. Probably the only way it will be used after they are gone.

[pooya87]

Normally, after the person is kill, the wealth remains with the family. It is easy to share assets such as houses and cars. But what if the property of the person is bitcoin? What if the deceased person is not saying the seed words?

What solution can be applied to this?

the solution is pretty simple, you leave the private keys, seed, encryption password you used in your will written for your family.
then when you died they open up your will, read it and they can recover the coins to use.
p.s. that is assuming you have a will and your will is not going to be opened before you die.

[nara1892]

Normally, after the person is kill, the wealth remains with the family. It is easy to share assets such as houses and cars. But what if the property of the person is bitcoin? What if the deceased person is not saying the seed words?

What solution can be applied to this?

the solution is pretty simple, you leave the private keys, seed, encryption password you used in your will written for your family.
then when you died they open up your will, read it and they can recover the coins to use.
p.s. that is assuming you have a will and your will is not going to be opened before you die.

but sometimes there are a few people who do not do such thing. it will be difficult to get that bitcoin.

or you also can give private keys, seed and encryption password to one of member of your family or two. and choose the trusted ones.

[panju1]

Normally, after the person is kill, the wealth remains with the family. It is easy to share assets such as houses and cars. But what if the property of the person is bitcoin? What if the deceased person is not saying the seed words?

What solution can be applied to this?

The solution is proper estate planning. You have identified the issue, now make sure your family members can get the seed in case of your death.
If you miss that out, your coins are lost for ever and the bitcoins held by everybody else goes up slightly in value. 

[warwar]

Try earning by yourself instead of waiting someone to die and be an heritance of his wealth.Its better  if the wealth with you is truly yours that you worked for it.But still maybe bitcoin and heritage system will not be able to work in bitcoins there are bitcoin users who is very secured that even his closest relatives dont know his social accounts and some wallets

[neochiny]

If the person has already died and you don't have the seed words/private keys/complete details then those bitcoins are lost. 

Unless those coins were in his desktop wallet (like Electrum) and is not encrypted or password protected in any way, then you'd be able to send the coins to an address you have full control of. 

That's the only scenario I could think of were you might be able to recover bitcoin funds of deceased loved ones.

So, make sure there is always a proper back-up and detailed account of every fund held/owned.

[Xester]

Normally, after the person is kill, the wealth remains with the family. It is easy to share assets such as houses and cars. But what if the property of the person is bitcoin? What if the deceased person is not saying the seed words?

What solution can be applied to this?

If that is the case then the bitcoins will stay untouched. At this point of time it is but unwise to keep the username and password of your account if you are already near death. We are working with bitcoins so we can give our family enough provision so that is why we must not keep it secret to them. The moment we experienced an emergency and we need an implant if our family doesnt know about our stored bitcoin then we will just die due to the secret we have. Instead of bitcoin saving our lives at times of emergency it will be the reason of our death if we keep it secret.

[wh04m1]

I do not expect heritage. Some friends are misunderstanding. Maybe I will leave a legacy.
Anyway. Bank safe systems can be used for this event. When a person writes and kills his will, he may wish to open the cradle and leave it as an inheritance to his loved ones. So the owner of BTC needs to take precautions in advance.

No one will reach the other bitcoins.

[Kemarit]

Normally, after the person is kill, the wealth remains with the family. It is easy to share assets such as houses and cars. But what if the property of the person is bitcoin? What if the deceased person is not saying the seed words?

What solution can be applied to this?

If the person die and he has bitcoin in his wallet then it will remain
and probably will be lost forever. If the deceased person has left a
clue, like vanity address which generate a private key base on the
individual's desired public address or something then you can start
from there but its impossible to brute force private keys.

Maybe the person just want to bring his bitcoin to  the grave so that
no one can actually used it 

[bob123]

I think the only way to get access to those BTC would be a Last will.. or you just tell your wife/Family where you stored your BTC... Since this isnt the best idea i would do as followed:
Take your priv key/seed/.. encrypt them with (kinda) Bad cryptographic Algorithm.. and give it to them..
They won't be able to decrypt it without Key, neither they can Break the crypt Function..
But after you dies several years later.. it should be able to crack the "older" crypto functions and get access to the BTC's

[Hydrogen]

In the united states, if the BTC value were greater than $5.45 million, the "death tax" / estate tax would kick in, 40% of the total value would be taxed away.

Example if the deceased had $20 million in bitcoin, the death tax/estate tax would collect $8 million in btc, leaving only $12 million btc for inheritors.

Of course, this assumes the IRS is effectively taxing btc and keeping track of btc whales. Whether or not this is true, I cannot say.

Also Hillary Clinton wanted to increase the tax rate from 40% to 60% and lower the minimum taxable value to $3.5 million.

Donald Trump supports abolishing the death tax/estate tax.

I think this and similar their stance on similar issues has much more to do with winning/losing the election than russia.

[RhodaGila]

Here you may have to share it, I mean you do it if only for one member of the family or a few families?
What must you do is create address how private keys and their wallets, seed, encryption password for a nominal amount in accordance with your wishes. But if some members of your family who would you give it does not quite understand about Bitcoin and wallet, my suggestion to use only the password only to make it easier to understand and write or print it in the paper or the place where you want.

[Eodguy149]

Yeah that is definitely a tough situation. I guess at that point the total pool of Bitcoin that will ever be in existence shrank. Bitcoin causes so many interesting questions like this. It is definitely nice to have a third party that can handle fringe cases like this but that is what happens. Total control over your money is a double edged sword!

[Tyrantt]

There's been a discussion here regarding lost bitcoins. My suggestion was that if the bitcoins, that are in someones wallet, get stuck there for ever due to the death of the owner of forgotten/lost keys, then after some period of time (about 10-12 years) if those bitcoins weren't used or wallet accessed then they should be sent back to the original miner. Since we know that bitcoin has a fixed amount of btc and therefore cannot be replaced if lost.

[FlightyPouch]

I think that will be really hard to accept. Well lets say I have a grandfather that is a bitcoin user at his early age and is really earning in big amounts.
He died accidentally and noone knows he is a bitcoin user. After years and years I discovered that he has a lot of bitcoin but I cannot get it because I dont know his account.
That will be really dissapointing. I think i well my family know my bitcoin wallet account when I feel that I will die soon.

[hatshepsut93]

There can be many ways to solve this situation. You could entrust your bitcoins to your lawyer so he will release them to your family in case of your death or illness. You could also build some dead man's switch that will give your private key to your relatives. For example you could build a smart contract that would require you to enter some password once per month or per week, and if you will fail, your private keys would be released to your family.

[cotton ball]

I think that will be really hard to accept. Well lets say I have a grandfather that is a bitcoin user at his early age and is really earning in big amounts.
He died accidentally and noone knows he is a bitcoin user. After years and years I discovered that he has a lot of bitcoin but I cannot get it because I dont know his account.
That will be really dissapointing. I think i well my family know my bitcoin wallet account when I feel that I will die soon.

This is the only reason most likely to happen. At least beloved wife or our children is one of the bitcoin users. If we use the official wills, it will be abused by your lawyer, because bitcoin is not an asset that is legally valid. You must have a trusted person to share your account data, because there is no legal entity that is trusted to insure total of bitcoin we have.