How to keep your bitcoins secure if you suddenly disappear (jail or prison)

[Cyberdyne]

To damn funny.

To damn funny or not to damn funny, that is the question.

[1715205609]

1715205609

[1715205609]

1715205609

[1715205609]

1715205609

[Flashman]

Average guy will gladly pay a fee to have someone else protect his coins. pretty obvious

I've been thinking about launching a service that is akin to offshore paper wallets. But ... maybe I'd have to be a bank of some sort. Otherwise I just operate on reputation alone. Maybe later. I don't know.

Average guy will pay fee, forget password, lose 2FA key, throw hissy fit, accuse you of stealing when you won't give coins back on the strength of an all caps ungrammatical email.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Average guy will gladly pay a fee to have someone else protect his coins. pretty obvious

I've been thinking about launching a service that is akin to offshore paper wallets. But ... maybe I'd have to be a bank of some sort. Otherwise I just operate on reputation alone. Maybe later. I don't know.

Average guy will pay fee, forget password, lose 2FA key, throw hissy fit, accuse you of stealing when you won't give coins back on the strength of an all caps ungrammatical email.

Damn funny

[Dabs]

Average guy will gladly pay a fee to have someone else protect his coins. pretty obvious

I've been thinking about launching a service that is akin to offshore paper wallets. But ... maybe I'd have to be a bank of some sort. Otherwise I just operate on reputation alone. Maybe later. I don't know.

Average guy will pay fee, forget password, lose 2FA key, throw hissy fit, accuse you of stealing when you won't give coins back on the strength of an all caps ungrammatical email.

As part of the service, I will require identification in high resolution, as that is the only way I can verify you, IN PERSON. Which means you have to come fly here to my location and we meet.

If you are trusting me with your coins (probably more than 100 BTC) then you should have no problem trusting me with your IDs.

I'll have a part of the clause that if Tom Cruise shows up at my door step with your credentials (your passport and your driver's license etc) and your face (Mission Impossible), then I won't be held liable. The whole exchange will be recorded in 1080p HD so if the real you suddenly appear, "hey, I thought that guy was you."

I can safely store your cold wallet in a highly secure location. Just not secure enough against the IMF or James Bond or any other highly trained secret agent. (For reals, I have a private vault inside a military base.)

Again, I haven't found any customers, so ...

Banks generally operate on reputation alone (although they also often rely on the reputation of the government insurance that backs deposits as well).

Yeah, there's FDIC for the US and PDIC for the Philippines, but they only cover a certain amount per depositor (and not per account.)

[inBitweTrust]

I can safely store your cold wallet in a highly secure location. Just not secure enough against the IMF or James Bond or any other highly trained secret agent. (For reals, I have a private vault inside a military base.)

Why are you trying to promote centralized cold storage? Even if you have good intentions and honest it is still an insecure proposal. People really should store their assets in multisig cold storage where no other party can manipulate or spend their currency.

It really isn't that hard to do this either with devices like entropy . Here is more information for people :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=858604

[Dabs]

I could offer to hold one part of your multi-sig cold storage. It makes no difference to me.

I'm not trying to promote anything. It's only as insecure as if anyone can get to me. If you believe your government can get to you (or some other adversary can get to you), then you have an option to hide your stash away somewhere else.

People do this all the time, in the form of bank accounts in a different country. The ones who haven't discovered bitcoin anyway.

You can do this on your own. Hide your private keys in a place no one else will find them. Under a rock. Up on the tree. ... ... Anywhere you can hide a micro SD card or a credit card sized piece of paper (or plastic or metal.)

Essentially, what I could be offering are tutorial services (or classes), and when the student has figure out enough about bitcoin, about computer security, about paper wallets, about cold storage. ... Then they can leave me and go do it themselves.

Or give me 1 key from their 4-of-9 multi sig wallet to keep.

[inBitweTrust]

I could offer to hold one part of your multi-sig cold storage. It makes no difference to me.

Essentially, what I could be offering are tutorial services (or classes), and when the student has figure out enough about bitcoin, about computer security, about paper wallets, about cold storage. ... Then they can leave me and go do it themselves.

Or give me 1 key from their 4-of-9 multi sig wallet to keep.

This all sounds good, we need more tutorials and better education.

[Dabs]

I think it's like, how I used to store all my money and savings in a Savings Bank Account... Because, well, I felt then, that I could trust the bank.

If my money is not being actively used in a business, as capital for example, or it is not lent to someone else, like a personal loan, then I keep what's left with me, in cash. Or in bitcoin. It took some time, but when I finally learned enough, then I took charge of safekeeping my own money.

I only keep enough in the bank well below their insured maximum value. (In my case, that's 500,000 PHP or only 11,000 USD.) It hasn't been tested yet, but I believe that it's per person, per bank. And not per account.

I have several accounts, in different banks, for different purposes. But the ones in the same bank are all collectively insured for only a certain amount. I don't see the bank closing any time soon, but so did a lot of people in some European country, like, last year I think. Cyprus?

But back to the original topic or question: If I suddenly die or disappear, the banks would freeze my money, take a chunk out for taxes, and wait several weeks or months before handing it over to my beneficiaries.

The small envelope in the safe would have the private keys and instructions on how to use bitcoin.

[solitude]

[Gundale]

Wouldn't the Trezor unit be the best option here? Store the bitcoins in there with the passphrase and seed memorized. Leave the unit somewhere safe in your house.

Then when you come out, even if Trezor has shut down and your house has been demolished, you could go to a site like Electrum or similar and input the seed and passphrase and bingo, your coins are in your new wallet?

[Willisius]

Wouldn't the Trezor unit be the best option here? Store the bitcoins in there with the passphrase and seed memorized. Leave the unit somewhere safe in your house.

Then when you come out, even if Trezor has shut down and your house has been demolished, you could go to a site like Electrum or similar and input the seed and passphrase and bingo, your coins are in your new wallet?

A trezor can easily be seized by law enforcement. This will make it difficult/impossible for you to be able to spend money even if the trezor keeps your bitcoin "secure"

[Gundale]

Wouldn't the Trezor unit be the best option here? Store the bitcoins in there with the passphrase and seed memorized. Leave the unit somewhere safe in your house.

Then when you come out, even if Trezor has shut down and your house has been demolished, you could go to a site like Electrum or similar and input the seed and passphrase and bingo, your coins are in your new wallet?

A trezor can easily be seized by law enforcement. This will make it difficult/impossible for you to be able to spend money even if the trezor keeps your bitcoin "secure"

I'm a bitcoin newbie but I think your statement is wrong.

If law enforcement seize your Trezor and you are sent to jail, when you come out, you can enter your seed and passphrase into Electrum (or similar product if Trezor/Electrum goes offline) and your wallet will reappear. Then you are free to spend bitcoins.

The Trezor has a further advantage of plausible deniability, where you can keep 1 or 2 bitcoins in one wallet on the Trezor, and the bulk of your stash with another seed and passphrase on the same Trezor.

That way if you are compelled to give up the wallet, you can give the one with just a few coins it in to law enforcement. The rest of your stash will be ready for you when you are released

My limited understanding of the Bitcoin technology is that BIP0032 wallet technology allows you to easily migrate between various products / hardware / offline wallets etc. without losing your coins. Your only worry would be whether BIP0032 technology would still be supported when you came out of jail, but I suppose if the stash you are trying to recover is big enough, you could probably pay a literate computer guy to build you a custom BIP32 wallet and recover your funds when you are paroled in the year 2030. The stash might be worth 10 times what it was when you went in so it would be worth the fees.

This is as per my limited understanding of the technology and the extensive reading I've done, so feel free to shred my assumptions to bits.

[solitude]

[Daniel91]

I think that first rule should be to never keep confident info on your personal computer.
Second rulče is to share such secure info with your spouse or someone you trust.
In this case, you don't need to worry about loosing your bitcoin if you have to go to jail
Your bTC will wait for you when you come back!

[ronimacarroni]

tatoo your bitcoin adress

[iGotSpots]

Is that Neo on the bench?

[Meuh6879]

1) Open a public lamp post (in a residential zone)
2) Save wallet.dat or private key in a thermos bottle
3) hard duke on the public lamp post
4) done for 15 years (or more)

...

1) Go to a 30th tree (on road or on a forest)
2) Mined
3) Save wallet.dat or private key to a plastic tupperware
4) close the hole

[Flashman]

Well, they changed out my utility poles including street lighting lately, so glad I didn't lose a wallet that way, and the tree idea has certain pitfalls also... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Job_%28film%29

[solitude]

some good ideas ITT

Prepare for the worst people.

[sekaiissobig]

I'm a little curious on this statement
There is currently a lot of bullshit laws in the USA that a red-blooded white man could easily get jailed for.