Leaving Bitcoin as inheritance

[camito]

If I die, my family can use my death certificate to rescue all my money from bank and appropriate all my posses.

But not bitcoin, I was thinking about how to leave bitcoins as inheritence in a safe way, minimizing risks of be stolen by my own family (still if I trust my family, they can store improperly the keys and be stolen, or forced to deliver).

The perfect solution, in my opinion, is a mechanism whithout intervention that reveal my keys to my family, this could be done if I do not access some service for a month, or if I don't store some stuff in the blockchain for a month or ... I don't know a solution. And only my family could access my keys, possibly they have keys that allow then to access my keys.

An good solution could be some artifact, like a file, that I can send to my family, or left it stored online and thar artifact could reveal my keys only to my family.

My basic ideia is:
1 - Encript the keys with your password, but must be a very strong password, resilient to brute force atack.
2 - Print the encripted keys in paper or some more durable medium and store securely in your home.
3 - Reveal to your family a limited set of characters with wich they can sucefuly find the password using brute force, in a short time.
4 - If you die, your family must get into your home/safe box, get the encripted keys and use the characters to perform a brute force atack in order to get the keys.

Does anyone have think about leaving bitcoin as inheritance? Is there already some solution to this? Thoughts?

Remind, Covid-19 is over here.

It's a good idea to leave Bitcoins as a form of inheritance to your family member. It would be very unsafe to just encrypt keys and share the password to your family member. What's best to do this is maybe to let everything be written in your last will and testament. It's something secure and private and can be trusted with your lawyer. Also, you can urge them to start their Bitcoin accounts and transfer maybe transfer coins little by little.

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[Yatsan]

if you're worried about it being stolen how about letting you most trusted lawyer hold the encrypted key that is designated to each of your beneficiaries with the password attached/sealed to it and stored on a bank locker and will only be retrieved and distributed to your beneficiaries once you died?

Damn this is a good one! Just include it to your "last will testament". Write the beneficiaries, amount/private key there, or simply put it on a hardware wallet and give the private key to your lawyer somehow. For me this is the best way to make sure that your money is going to your family if you are gonna die. It could be a friend or anyone else but it's hard to trust anybody, so for me a lawyer will be a good one.

[hitsnorth]

doesn't it all sound like an old idea of creating something very similar to solicitor's company in crypto?

[o_e_l_e_o]

The idea is great but the easiest way to do it is via flash drive or usb, save your private keys in notepad then you will also create an instruction in notepad on how they can access wallet then convert and withdraw it.

Extremely risky. Your private keys should not be saved electronically, and especially not in plain text. Anyone who finds that flash drive can completely clear out your wallets in a matter of seconds. There is also a risk associated with copying and pasting your private keys in to notepad or similar. There is plenty of malware which could steal your private key from your clipboard, from the file itself, from your RAM, etc., and transfer it to a malicious third party.

give the private key to your lawyer somehow.

This is even more risky than above. Not only do you have all the issues with extracting your private key and saving it to an electronic file as I described above, but now you are also printing that file (and have to worry about printer malware and the printer's built in memory), and giving it to a complete stranger. You are placing complete trust in the honesty of that lawyer, and everyone that he or she works with. You are also placing complete trust in their security systems and the security of their building. You also have to consider physical degradation or damage to your storage medium over 20, 30, 40, etc., years. There's an awful lot of things that go wrong here.

[Timelord2067]

Recently a guy by the name of Bruno Kucinskas died who was an early participant of both the forum and bitcoin more widely.

He has an appeal to donate to help cover his funeral costs and in the couple of weeks since he died, those funds have remained untouched which has led many to speculate the family either doesn't know how to access the bitcoins, it's an elaborate hoax (ie he's not dead - wankety wank) or, the family are waiting to access the funds at a later date.  In either case, it highlights the need for families to be aware of just how many crypto's as person is HODLing when they die.

[Sanugarid]

If I'm going to die soon, and want my bitcoins to be inherited I'd probably leave my family the simplest clue I can think of on how they are going to reach it. Since my computer has a password, I'll change it to much easier one, like my name, my initials, my birth date some kind of stuff that they are going to guess easily and I'm sure they are going to find my files I'll save a notepad containing all the instructions, private keys, password they need to reach out for my bitcoins. Having a lawyer for this is like also inheriting the lawyer of your bitcoins, coz having a lawyer is expensive, Aside if the amount of your bitcoin is not that huge then absolutely you won't be needing any of middle man.

[Velkro]

3 - Reveal to your family a limited set of characters with wich they can sucefuly find the password using brute force, in a short time.

that doesn't add any kind of security, either reveal the whole password or none of it. partial password is only adding more problems than solving anything.

Agree 100%.
Your solution isnt a solution when you put on non technical people need of brute-forcing password. Its like black magic to them.
I heard and red many inheritance solutions. Not single one is perfect, they all have their lows and highs.
Solution is needed here, because it should be as easy as transacting bitcoin through smartphone.

[crwth]

I know this has been discussed, and I think will be continued to be discussed over and over again. It varies with different people, especially what the family is like. It's going to be easy if the family you are going to leave it to is tech-savvy. If not, you are going to have a hard time explaining it.

Leave it this way, prepare the last dying will video for your family to see or whoever you want to leave that inheritance to. Make a written instruction as well as video instructions on what to do. I think if you have a hardware wallet, just teach them how to recover using your seed, and I think that's pretty easy. Prepare a list of links to help them as well.

[casperBGD]

If I die, my family can use my death certificate to rescue all my money from bank and appropriate all my posses.

But not bitcoin, I was thinking about how to leave bitcoins as inheritence in a safe way, minimizing risks of be stolen by my own family (still if I trust my family, they can store improperly the keys and be stolen, or forced to deliver).

The perfect solution, in my opinion, is a mechanism whithout intervention that reveal my keys to my family, this could be done if I do not access some service for a month, or if I don't store some stuff in the blockchain for a month or ... I don't know a solution. And only my family could access my keys, possibly they have keys that allow then to access my keys.

An good solution could be some artifact, like a file, that I can send to my family, or left it stored online and thar artifact could reveal my keys only to my family.

My basic ideia is:
1 - Encript the keys with your password, but must be a very strong password, resilient to brute force atack.
2 - Print the encripted keys in paper or some more durable medium and store securely in your home.
3 - Reveal to your family a limited set of characters with wich they can sucefuly find the password using brute force, in a short time.
4 - If you die, your family must get into your home/safe box, get the encripted keys and use the characters to perform a brute force atack in order to get the keys.

Does anyone have think about leaving bitcoin as inheritance? Is there already some solution to this? Thoughts?

Remind, Covid-19 is over here.

it is a good question, i am also thinking regarding it, it is important for the family to have access to funds if someone is not there, but there is still no perfect mechanism to store your keys, and the family could take them afterwards, and it will be missed if you do not leave them, this has to be solved in the future

[kryptqnick]

If I die, my family can use my death certificate to rescue all my money from bank and appropriate all my posses.

But not bitcoin, I was thinking about how to leave bitcoins as inheritence in a safe way, minimizing risks of be stolen by my own family (still if I trust my family, they can store improperly the keys and be stolen, or forced to deliver).

The perfect solution, in my opinion, is a mechanism whithout intervention that reveal my keys to my family, this could be done if I do not access some service for a month, or if I don't store some stuff in the blockchain for a month or ... I don't know a solution. And only my family could access my keys, possibly they have keys that allow then to access my keys.

An good solution could be some artifact, like a file, that I can send to my family, or left it stored online and thar artifact could reveal my keys only to my family.

My basic ideia is:
1 - Encript the keys with your password, but must be a very strong password, resilient to brute force atack.
2 - Print the encripted keys in paper or some more durable medium and store securely in your home.
3 - Reveal to your family a limited set of characters with wich they can sucefuly find the password using brute force, in a short time.
4 - If you die, your family must get into your home/safe box, get the encripted keys and use the characters to perform a brute force atack in order to get the keys.

Does anyone have think about leaving bitcoin as inheritance? Is there already some solution to this? Thoughts?

Remind, Covid-19 is over here.

Op, if you're interested in this topic, you might want to check out this thread by LoyceV about Locktime: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5180850.0. The idea is that a signed transaction becomes valid after some years (after a future block). It's not a good solution if you're thinking of untimely death, but it is quite an original way to arrange inheritance.
As for your plan with limited characters and hope of brute force working, it seems quite risky to me, and it doesn't prevent the family from accessing the money before you actually die.

[YuginKadoya]

I am also thinking the same way in inheriting Bitcoin to anyone I love, I would just use a safety deposit box from a bank with a power of the attorney to surely secure your passphrase or the main key I don't want my loved ones to be torture in overthinking about opening my wallet and you will not really use your bitcoin when you are dead so just make a decision quite for that Bitcoin will continue in circulation than to just let it rot inside your wallet,

but if you don't trust the bank in taking the safety of your main key or password then just leave it to someone that you trust that also has even a small knowledge regarding Cryptocurrency.

[Salamstar]

Does anyone have think about leaving bitcoin as inheritance? Is there already some solution to this? Thoughts?

Remind, Covid-19 is over here.

I have thought a lot about this already and wondered what will happen to my Bitcoin legacy after my death, and I have come to the conclusion that one of my family members must be taught about digital currencies and the way I withdraw them from the platforms and wallets I own, and I created a small notebook in which I record all the important data and keep it in a safe place .

[Mulann2]

"2 - Print the encripted keys in paper or some more durable medium and store securely in your home."

If you are going to do the above except you are going to tell a trusted member of the family where it is located and most especially how to use it to retrieve the asset, i would say write all information on paper and deposit it in a bank or give your personal lawyer so that in your absence they can present to your next of kin, it will be more like having a will presented to your family.

[blockman]

if you're worried about it being stolen how about letting you most trusted lawyer hold the encrypted key that is designated to each of your beneficiaries with the password attached/sealed to it and stored on a bank locker and will only be retrieved and distributed to your beneficiaries once you died?

This is an option but it's also risky to entrust those things to a lawyer knowing the details of the encrypted keys. And do you think that the bank will keep something like this? they don't even recognize cryptocurrencies. Educating your family while you are alive is the best option, teaching them how to access a wallet, retrieving a wallet through private keys that they can easily understand that it's the main key to unlock the funds that you'll above to leave as an inheritance.

[MCobian]

A good idea to make bitcoin as inheritance, I didn't even think about. I agree with the 4 points mentioned in the opening post. So by running
these 4 points, the bitcoin that we will inherit can arrive safely to our family. Because the security of bitcoin storage is different from keeping
money in a bank that is guaranteed safe. Bitcoin needs a little special handling, as explained in the opening post. Because bitcoin storage is
vulnerable to being hacked, therefore we must pay attention to this bitcoin storage.

[Taskford]

A good idea to make bitcoin as inheritance, I didn't even think about. I agree with the 4 points mentioned in the opening post. So by running
these 4 points, the bitcoin that we will inherit can arrive safely to our family. Because the security of bitcoin storage is different from keeping
money in a bank that is guaranteed safe. Bitcoin needs a little special handling, as explained in the opening post. Because bitcoin storage is
vulnerable to being hacked, therefore we must pay attention to this bitcoin storage.

Actually even physical assets are entrusted with their personal lawyers and they are the one who will distribute assets base on the will and testament of the real, so there's no problem with this on digital assets to and if you really want to do this just make sure the attorney you hired is trusted and not a scumbag.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Since my computer has a password, I'll change it to much easier one, like my name, my initials, my birth date some kind of stuff that they are going to guess easily

How are you going to change your password after you are dead? Also, unless you are using full disk encryption, a password to an account for your OS does nothing if someone has physical access to your computer. They can just remove your hard drive and mount it on a second machine.

I'll save a notepad containing all the instructions, private keys, password they need to reach out for my bitcoins.

Storing everything needed to steal all your bitcoin saved in a notepad or word processor file is an incredibly risky move. Anyone with physical or networked access to your computer can steal all your money, and there is countless malware which could find that file and send it to a remote attacker. You definitely shouldn't do this.

just make sure the attorney you hired is trusted and not a scumbag.

There's that word again - trust. The whole point is to not have to trust anybody. If you are going to trust a complete stranger like an attorney, then why would you not just cut out the middle man and trust your family member directly? Can you trust your own family less than someone you've never met?

Physical assets are different. Most physical assets aren't handed over to an attorney to keep safe until after you die, and even if you did do this, if they were to "go missing" then the attorney will be prosecuted for theft. If you hand an attorney a private key for safe keeping, he can steal all your bitcoin, deny any knowledge of it, and say you must have been hacked in some other way. Your family would never be able to prove otherwise, especially since you are no longer alive to explain how you set up your wallet in the first place.

[MFahad]

"2 - Print the encripted keys in paper or some more durable medium and store securely in your home."

If you are going to do the above except you are going to tell a trusted member of the family where it is located and most especially how to use it to retrieve the asset, i would say write all information on paper and deposit it in a bank or give your personal lawyer so that in your absence they can present to your next of kin, it will be more like having a will presented to your family.

I think you can trust at least one person in your family, whether it be your parents or spouse and they should know the private keys of your wallets and more importantly how to use those keys.

[FanatMonet]

As an option, not bad. But the question of trust immediately arises, one cannot unfortunately exclude the possibility that someone will want to receive this money early. As an option, this is to share the password between the next of kin and give each part. So that if anything, they could collect it from pieces, but then a problem arises, if even 1 part is lost, then the password can no longer be collected.

[LogitechMouse]

I'm thinking of this too. How can I give my Bitcoin to my family when this happen to me.

The only way that I see is that giving all of the private key to a very trusted member of your family and in my case, maybe my wife and my son in the future will be the ones who will I give the private keys. For me, it is easier if you will just give all of the words to them instead of giving just half or they will not do anything on it or worse they will leave it and will not use. I will teach them the basics on how to store Bitcoin properly since I know some of the ways . That is enough for me already.