Bitcoin is private and decentralized, ok but what if someone dies?

[DarkDays]

This is the common issue that we may encounter about cryptocurrency, what if we die? then probably your bitcoin or assets will just be stored in your wallet and no one in your family and friends can use it. Maybe the solution for this is you have to give some of your wallet details to one of your family or to the one who you trust, it will lessen the possibility to waste all the hard work you have spent on earning your bitcoin.

I agree. Unless you have someone you can trust to tell them where they can find the private key, the issue of death and loss of all your beloved crypto is as valid as any other.

Rather than this being a fault in the system, I think it rather has to do with you, your boundaries and your life. You can choose to take certain precaution steps to avoid being in this dilemma and those steps of course depend on you as an individual, but I reiterate that it has nothing to do with crypto - crypto needs to be secure! There are ways around this, so make sure you prepare for the worst.

[pinggoki]

Bitcoin is private as well ad the private keys of each wallet accounts of the bitcoin holders. If the bitcoin holder died then the coins or tokens on his wallet will not be able to recover, unless the person who dies has someone that he/she tells about his private keys or password in each wallet that they have but if it doesn't have then it would be sad to say that the money or coins and tokens in the wallets will be remain there and no one will be able to recover or have an access to it.

[blckhawk]

Bitcoin is a lovely concept but I feel it failed to include a system that considers the wealth of someone who suddenly dies and inherits his money to his loved ones "Family". I've always thought about this in my head, what happens to my money when I die.

Yeah, it also once come to my thoughts that what if I'm gone and there is no one will benefit from all of my hard work earings. Anyway, our Bitcoin will more likely get stuck in there in our wallet and no one will benefit from it unless your family does know significant information to access your Bitcoins.

Because young people like many of us think we're going to live forever and we don't normally write wells, let's be honest here. Think about banks and real-life situation, here many of us hate the centralization and how government work on things, however, there is some benefit to what they do. When a person dies there's a system that automatically inherits all of your assets and money to your kids, which is a good thing and a plus in my book.
Bitcoin does not consider this! maybe if I am old I will write my private key for my family, but then again what are the chances that they would understand how to get the money? There are so many people who aren't computer savvy, so even if we go the extra mile of writing the sentence or the key in the well, a good chance that family members will not know how to use it and take it for granted. They don't know how much bitcoin worth and will neglect it, of course, given you wrote a well. What if you didn't?

You could have just started to write up or list your private key though, you don't need to wait until you get old because no one knows how long we will last in this world. In this case, better if you will put all necessary information in one place and put a password in that at least one of your family members knows it. I agreed that they might not computer savvy to access all this information but I believe there is one person at least who is capable of learning and can access these holding of yours. Being not computer savvy is not an excuse because everything can now be learned especially all the information you need to know is not published online.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

It may well be a wild goose chase, but if you’ve got access to his emails, you can try starting to determine the wallets that he may have had. i.e. going over the emails you may find a reference to purchasing a hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor), or using a certain Exchange.
Some Exchanges actually do have a running protocol for these cases, providing you determine that there is an account to retrieve there (see for example Coinbase’s procedure here: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/managing-my-account/other/how-do-i-gain-access-to-a-deceased-family-members-coinbase-account). Additionally, the laptop or phone may still contain a wallet software (Electrum, etc.).

The above is just a preamble to an unlikely recovery, but trying to determine what wallets may have been used, and where, is the first stepping stone (alongside any 12 or 24 word piece of paper that may be hidden somewhere around the house, with a mnemonic that can be used for retrieval).

[dkbit98]

Bitcoin is a lovely concept but I feel it failed to include a system that considers the wealth of someone who suddenly dies and inherits his money to his loved ones "Family". I've always thought about this in my head, what happens to my money when I die.

This is not fault of Bitcoin, but the owner of Bitcoin and all you need to do is to write a letter with simple instructions how to recover your funds and use your private key or seed words, and before that you should try to educate your family members about Bitcoin.
You are responsible for your own Bitcoin and only you are responsible for passing your wealth to your family members when you are gone one day, so you should think about it on time.
Think about Bitcoin in the same way like you think what happens to all off your other assets in case of your death and it will be just fine.

Now, why did I bring this up? My brother who is one year older than me, he's only 40 when he died in a car accident last year. He talks nonstop about bitcoin and crypto so this indicates to me that he was investing. We don't know how much he owns, where he owns it, and how to give it back to his kids as heritage. His kids deserve to get that money but it's gone forever I'm assuming? so don't you think this is unfair, as I said bitcoin has a flaw that needs to be fixed in that sense.

It is not gone forever and he must be keeping his backup phrase somewhere at his house or his work place, because it's the only way he can be sure to recover funds for himself or his family members.
You should be looking at his stuff for words written on paper, hardware wallets or maybe in his computer for software wallets he was using.

Hi, I wanna buy bitcoins using neteller money, reason being, ive put some money into my neteller account and theyre now stuck and I don't know what to spend them on due to sites never accepting neteller

Interesting that you purchased Bitcoin in 2014 but you are now talking about your dead brother who talked about Bitcoin all the time.

[hatshepsut93]

There's no way to implement inheritance on a protocol level, just like any other features that would require human decisions, like chargebacks, freezing illegal funds and so on. It's just like strong encryption - if you don't have the key, there's no way around it. A person could have some digital possesions, like family photos or unpublished works, but if they have encrypted them, their family won't be able to inherit it too.

[Onuohakk]

The issue is that who will I trust to disclose my private keys in case something happens tomorrow. When it comes to something that involves a huge amount of money someone gat to be careful about whom to access his or her access tomorrow.
I don't want a situation where someone will access my private keys without my permission or before my time

[thecryptogandalf]

Those coins will forever be lost, I expect a lot of this in the future. It will just increase the scarcity thus increasing the price. The day will come when very few people actually have an entire coin. Fractions of a coin will be the norm.

[Ucy]

I don't think it'll be that difficult to create a decentralized inheritance system that transfers wealth to loved ones when the owner of the wealth dies. It could be automatic or manual system, or both. I believe there are decentralized systems that can be used to do this already. People could even provide such service for fees... and it should be possible to include your love ones for inheritance transfer once you open your decentralized account.
   Why not get the ones he trusted most go through his stuff and search for the keys/passwords to his funds? Sorry for your loss

[acener]

Ever since I got into Bitcoin I convinced some of my family member into it and teach them about it,
So I don't have any problem like what OP has discussed since they could just retrieve it and use it after I'm gone.

[pawanjain]

We have already discussed many times on how to inherit bitcoin and we had received very interesting methods of inheritance.

In what way you’ll inherit Bitcoin to your loved ones?
When Bitcoin Must Be Inherited
Bitcoin inheritance
[Tutorial] Making your crypto inheritible
Leaving Bitcoin as inheritance

As for the bitcoins your brother had, he would be definitely having something on his phone or computer which should lead to his coins.
Just check out his phone and computer thoroughly and also check his mails and cloud storage and external storage.
Also, ask his friends if he had invested anything in crypto to be sure of the same.

[asbani]

We have already discussed many times on how to inherit bitcoin and we had received very interesting methods of inheritance.

In what way you’ll inherit Bitcoin to your loved ones?
When Bitcoin Must Be Inherited
Bitcoin inheritance
[Tutorial] Making your crypto inheritible
Leaving Bitcoin as inheritance

As for the bitcoins your brother had, he would be definitely having something on his phone or computer which should lead to his coins.
Just check out his phone and computer thoroughly and also check his mails and cloud storage and external storage.
Also, ask his friends if he had invested anything in crypto to be sure of the same.

Many good suggestions in here and thanks for the replies.

We already tried checking the computer and phone, he had a newly Samsung smartphone with a password and face-ID. It was really difficult to try and open it for many reasons. 1) The privacy of my brother and his image. After all his private stuff/secrets need to go with him with respect, this is just my view. However, I tried to open it but it was really hard with the password. I needed to hack his phone but this also was not an easy thing to do, ethically nor technically. The new smartphones are very difficult to crack open even with very good technician guys trust me.

His computer is also the same story, it had a password and I couldn't open it.

So I guess that's it, It's all gone! The issue is he moved all of his money into bitcoin, all of the money that he gathered throughout his career was put it which means his family/kids lost the man who provided for them + his money.

I did not like the idea that you must teach the family how to use bitcoin + give them the secret wors and private keys. I do not think this is a smart solution to the issue. There are many problems associated with this method which I can discuss even further but some of the people above already mentioned them. You'd be surprised at this day and age there are many people who are not really good with technology and computers, I know a man who doesn't know how to register an email. I personally can attest to this, my father isn't good with smartphones or computers, he still living in the past and it is impossible to teach him bitcoins or how to open up a private key and then transfer the bitcoins. This will be impossible. And same with my wife.

An automated way to give all heritage to the family is a must-implementation I think, just like what happens in banks. A guy dies, the court decides who inherits what and at what percentage, then you take the papers to the bank and get the money, simple as that. I'm sure if Satoshi is around he'd find a clever brilliant system to make this work.

[Dannaey]

The solution is to write your bitcoin address and private key on paper or digitally and have someone you trust to hold it so when the owner died unexpectedly, someone can take care of it.

But the problem is when the owner hasn't shared his/her private key to someone he trusts then suddenly die. There is no way that we can retrieve or open his Bitcoin wallet. That's how Bitcoin wallet is really a secured one.

[ranochigo]

That's where Multisig comes in. You can try making a 3-of-4 Multisig and give two of your children one of the keys each and a lawyer the other, making a total of 3. You can include it in your will so they'll be able to spend if after your death.

An automated system to automatically do so is insecure by nature and would be difficult to implement in the first place. Using Multisig for something like this would be simpler.

[oktana]

The ability of anyone knowing that you had money/knowing what you have depends on you. If you really want them to know, you'd have told them before you passed. This is actually a realistic topic that we face in the crypto space. But like I said, whatever that happens depends on you (even though I know I'm guilty of not really telling no one an indepth extent to what I own...).

[Kayum10029]

Bitcoin is, of course, a well-known decentralized currency.  Bitcoin can be controlled by any organization but it cannot be controlled by any country alone.  However, it seems that Bitcoin will be recognized as one of the most widely used currencies in the world.  Currently the use of coronavirus has increased so much that it is now completely decentralized.

[Kayum10029]

Bitcoin is a completely online based virtual currency even though there is no documentation.  If someone writes down the password of a wallet in a document and gives it to someone at the time of death, then that lost coin can be recovered by someone of the next generation.  If this is not possible then Bitcoin will be lost forever after death.

[yazher]

Probably they might state in their will that they will give their family the coins they have and leave the private key somehow?

There are only two scenarios with this kind of event if it's gonna happen to someone whom they didn't have some relatives to take care of their crypto assets after they suddenly passed away. The two scenarios are either the crypto assets will be lost forever or someone will inherit them. that's just the way it is. So far, I never heard someone found some buried crypto assets by someone. Like I said, either of those two will become possible if that's gonna happen to you in the middle of your long time holding.

[Lorence.xD]

That is the least of their worries and if they didn't prepare for the inevitable then their bitcoin will be gone in the void forever. And we should thank them because they are the people that will contribute to the continuous increase of the prices of bitcoin because they will be considered as lost coins if they didn't prepare for your bitcoin inheritance.

[Sanugarid]

Bitcoin is a lovely concept but I feel it failed to include a system that considers the wealth of someone who suddenly dies and inherits his money to his loved ones "Family". I've always thought about this in my head, what happens to my money when I die.

The idea in writing my private key or long word sentence in a well is a method but is not efficient.

Because young people like many of us think we're going to live forever and we don't normally write wells, let's be honest here. Think about banks and real-life situation, here many of us hate the centralization and how government work on things, however, there is some benefit to what they do. When a person dies there's a system that automatically inherits all of your assets and money to your kids, which is a good thing and a plus in my book.

Bitcoin does not consider this! maybe if I am old I will write my private key for my family, but then again what are the chances that they would understand how to get the money? There are so many people who aren't computer savvy, so even if we go the extra mile of writing the sentence or the key in the well, a good chance that family members will not know how to use it and take it for granted. They don't know how much bitcoin worth and will neglect it, of course, given you wrote a well. What if you didn't?

Now, why did I bring this up? My brother who is one year older than me, he's only 40 when he died in a car accident last year. He talks nonstop about bitcoin and crypto so this indicates to me that he was investing. We don't know how much he owns, where he owns it, and how to give it back to his kids as heritage. His kids deserve to get that money but it's gone forever I'm assuming? so don't you think this is unfair, as I said bitcoin has a flaw that needs to be fixed in that sense.

What if my brother owns 4 or 5 BTC which his kids deserve? we will never know! the kids already got all the heritage out of the bank which is why I said the banks and government are a plus in that kind of issues/problems.

P.S. Most of his money goes into crypto and stocks, which is why the kids and his wife did not get much out of the banks, so with this, I don't know where to go to find out. If someone got an idea pls let me know.

It's not actually the system's fault, it's your brother's fault to keep it secret even to his own family. When it comes to finances, family or trustworthy relatives should have access to your money or you should at least let them know where you were spending your own money, So I think we consider such possibilities like this to avoid getting in a situation like losing your BTC just simply because no one knows about it other than you.