Gifting satoshis to future generations

[mamal]

gifting? more like taking to consideration guys

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you look at the image in the OP post the USB stick seems functional.

It isn't. The image in the OP is not meant to be taken seriously, but even if it was, the USB stick wouldn't work. USB to PS/2 to 9 pin serial to 25 pin serial to parallel. It will fall at the first hurdle because the PS/2 adapter won't transfer data from the USB stick. I'm also don't think either the serial or parallel adapters would be able to transmit meaningful signals from the USB stick. Furthermore, parallel ports don't have any power pins, so the USB stick wouldn't even be able to power up. However, note the two empty USB slots just to the left of that monstrosity.

If you really needed to use an old computer with no USB functionality, you can buy a USB to header connector for less than 10 bucks or a USB PCI card for less than 20 bucks.

[btcmurat]

The USB ports may disappear. But there will be a different tool for the connection. Maybe everything happens with an eye scan. Our eyes or fingerprints are the key to a lot of information. I think Satoshi will be known in 100 years.

[fillippone]

If you look at the image in the OP post the USB stick seems functional.

It isn't. The image in the OP is not meant to be taken seriously, but even if it was, the USB stick wouldn't work. USB to PS/2 to 9 pin serial to 25 pin serial to parallel. It will fall at the first hurdle because the PS/2 adapter won't transfer data from the USB stick. I'm also don't think either the serial or parallel adapters would be able to transmit meaningful signals from the USB stick. Furthermore, parallel ports don't have any power pins, so the USB stick wouldn't even be able to power up. However, note the two empty USB slots just to the left of that monstrosity.

If you really needed to use an old computer with no USB functionality, you can buy a USB to header connector for less than 10 bucks or a USB PCI card for less than 20 bucks.

Out of merits now, but tip my hat to that technical analysis of an half-joke image.
Yes, now I looked more carefully, yes I do agree: power could be an issue there ( now I have memories about how many of those adapters I personally owned in my life....)

[rdluffy]

What if there are no usb slot in 20 years? I cannot rule out this possibility.

You will simply plug the floppy disk adapter in the matrix /tesla /ohmibod whatever their name will be in 20 years slot 
That's what adapters are for!

Yes, this is what I said on my post, but nobody read 

There is always a long time of transictions
Even now, I can find in a few minutes how can I buy some device to read my floppy disks

[squatter]

After a few thoughts he came with this solution:

€74 a piece for the Cryptosteel Capsule seems like overkill to me. I suppose you're paying for the waterproof/fireproof aspects, but as someone who already has a weatherproof safe, that seems pricey for a glorified paper wallet.

It looks pretty snazzy, though. I'll give it that.

[Ilsk]

It's an interesting article and experiment, but there are certainly some pretty big flaws in his arguments.

If, for example, someone received today a floppy disk or a Sony minidisk from the ’90s, it would be very hard to find a device able to read it now.

This is nonsense. With Amazon Prime and 10 bucks, I can have a floppy disk drive delivered to my door within 24 hours. With a car and a local computer store, I can get one within the hour. And this is a technology with is 50 years old and from a time when some houses had a single computer, maybe. We now live in time where every person, let alone every house, has multiple devices using USB - computers and all their peripherals, TVs, games consoles and peripherals, mobile phones, chargers, power banks, cars, etc. There is no way you are going to have any problem using a USB device in 20 years' time.

possibly requiring the beneficiary to derive manually from the seed in order to find the keys where the coins are

Again, although wallets may move on from BIP44 or BIP84, support for these will always exist. There is no way in 20 years people will have to manually derive these keys. There are far too many sites, repositories, programs, etc. out there. Only a complete failure of the internet would make every single one of these inaccessible.

If storing coins for 20 years I would also choose something like steel engraving, but rather because I wouldn't want to trust that the digital hardware wasn't going to degrade in that time rather than the reasons above.

Hello, the author of the article here. I agree that there will always be a way in the future to use past technology, surely you.  can buy all the necessary adapters on Amazon and find some software to derived an HD seed  with an out of fashion standard, but one of my design goals was to keep things simple. Today it would be annoying and time consuming to buy a floppy disk reader for a single use, and in the future it could be even worst: it's not hard to imagine a future were teenagers are totally foreign to the idea of physically connect an external storage to their device, as wireless and cloud alternatives become more popular. Obviously I may be wrong on this, the truth is that we just cannot know how consumer grade technology will evolve, so avoiding electronic devices all together seemed like the safest option to keep the redeem phase simple.

Moreover writing down a key on a physical support is just more reliable for long term storage than any digital storage medium.

[Ilsk]

€74 a piece for the Cryptosteel Capsule seems like overkill to me. I suppose you're paying for the waterproof/fireproof aspects, but as someone who already has a weatherproof safe, that seems pricey for a glorified paper wallet.

It looks pretty snazzy, though. I'll give it that.

Yeah I paid the premium more for the look than for durability concerns. Non-bitcoiners may not be able to fully appreciate a piece of paper with few words written on it, and may easily lose it within few years, so I wanted something that looked cool and that they would keep safe as if it was regular jewellery.

[fillippone]

Welcome back to the forum!

[adjed]

€74 a piece for the Cryptosteel Capsule seems like overkill to me. I suppose you're paying for the waterproof/fireproof aspects, but as someone who already has a weatherproof safe, that seems pricey for a glorified paper wallet.

It looks pretty snazzy, though. I'll give it that.

This is probably the reason why he went to the top shelf version, if you could just use a safe, then you could just have written it in plastic and stored it there, but there is still the risk that if anything happens to you, that child you wish to gift might not have access to your fireproof and fireproof safe and they would end up losing the funds anyways.

Non-bitcoiners may not be able to fully appreciate a piece of paper with few words written on it, and may easily lose it within few years, so I wanted something that looked cool and that they would keep safe as if it was regular jewellery.

I think this summaries the whole thing, many things might change in 18 years, you might not be alive, your house could be submerged in water and you could lose access to your safe but a steel Jewelry is probably the best bet and they could even wear it while growing up without it losing it's quality. Anyways welcome back to the forum.

[joinfree]

This is a great idea as the giver stands to own a fortune if bitcoin rises again to any new all time height. But i hope he really backs up the seedphrase of the various wallets used in storing all these satoshis. Quite a chunk of BTC has been lost in circulation already, the least we can do is to compound to it.

[xvids]

It would be great but the question is what would be the value of Bitcoin when the new generation receive it.
Would Bitcoin still have a value would they be able to spent it?
Surely the device would be more advance so if we really want them to receive it properly we would have to keep on checking the wallet and make sure it is safe.

[tsaroz]

I found this quote from the article to be particularly interesting:

If, for example, someone received today a floppy disk or a Sony minidisk from the ’90s, it would be very hard to find a device able to read it now. It is likely that the same problem will happen with USB sticks, so using a hardware wallet from 2019 may end up requiring multiple adapters to bridge between different communication standards.

And it made me wonder whether in 18 years, when the gift recipient has grown up, bitcoin will be as popular or as relevant.  It's a technology that might not age well in that amount of time--and I don't get the feeling that it's going to disappear or anything like that, but you wouldn't expect USB drives to disappear either.  People expect long-term growth from bitcoin, but the truth of the matter is that none of us knows what's going to happen in crypto.

Having said that, I think it's a fantastic idea to put aside some satoshis or whatever amount of bitcoin would be appropriate for a newborn.  It's a cool gift if nothing else.

Even if bitcoin were not as popular or relevant as now after 18 years. It would still be a good souvenir to give. A piece of the first cryptocurrency that actually attracted the attention of the whole world and was the best investment for the decade 2010-2020. Bitcoin already has a place in history.

[bitvalak]

Actually the object is interesting, but will be prone to being stolen because the goods are in physical form.
I prefer digital forms online, because it's easy to access. Because the digital world will last long with the progress of the modern era.

[BlackFor3st]

Today I found on medium this nice article by Federico Tenga about long term storing of bitcoin to be gifted to future generations.
 There are a few interesting points to be considered, some of them I completely overlooked while thinking about this very topic:

So, have a read:

Gifting satoshis to future generations

Recently I’ve been tasked to gift some satoshis to a newborn baby, who is supposed to redeem them when he grows up, about 18 years from now. The challenge was trickier than originally expected, as there are many different ways to store bitcoin, each one with different trade-offs, and at the same time it’s hard to predict the state of the Bitcoin industry two decades into the future.

Hardware compatibility doesn’t age well

After a few thoughts he came with this solution:



Read the whole article here:

Gifting satoshis to future generations

He has an (inactive) account here on Bitcointalk, maybe if you have enough comment we can summon him back to the forum!

It is a unique way of gift that can result in either happy or sad moment. It will be happy if it turns out that 18 years from now bitcoin will still exist and it's value will climb up to it's highest.

While the opposite one is once bitcoin is not existing anymore or it's value goes back to nothing. In any case, I like the idea as it is very unique and is very challenging for the receiver on how he is going to redeem the gift once he is ready.

[adaseb]

Why don't you just tell the kid when he grows up the 12/24 word mnemonics? Depending on how much money we are dealing here you can probably just remember the words. Not that difficult.

When you make the wallet, just pick a mnemonic where you can piece together a poem or story and just tell it to the kid its entire life. When they grow up, tell them what the poem or story really meant.

Sure there are issues here where you can forget the words or just accidentally pass away but there are also issues with paper wallets or steel engraved bars which can also be damaged or stolen or misplaced after 20 years.

The USB is not a good method because who knows, maybe the chip inside the USB can degrade like some of those old burnt CDs from the 90s and just lose its data.

[DreamStage]

I find it quite cool to have such thing for future generations.

Just don't know if that Cryptosteel’s Capsule will still be working at his 18 years old or who knows, broken by something from real life event.

Although it is sweet magnificient equipment he made i think there will be something in the future taking that as an adoption for other new equipments on the market with such potential.

It's time for us to wait and see if that baby feedsback here at Bitcointalk later

[julius caesar]

This is gonna be good. Thank you for this wonderful information. Actually, you can use this one to store bitcoin for a very long time and give your digital currency to the one that you want to give it to. In that case, you can just easily share your money to your children or your future recipient for them to continue the journey of bitcoin.

[gabmen]

Well 18 years is quite a long time and a lot of things that the giver did not expect may have happened already during that time. With the speed technology is moving forward, it's not impossible that btc, or crypto, has already been replaced by another alternative to fiat. Bitcoin took almost half that time to be at the point where it is right now and a lot has changed since then. Only time can tell whether it's a good idea or not.

[Butwhytho]

It's a cool gift if nothing else.

Agreed. I'd be glad to get this sort of gift now but who knows if it'll have any value in the future (except for the sentimental one, of course)?