Off the top of my head, you could set up what is called a MultiSig wallet.How do I pass on my Bitcoins to my next of kin?
Off the top of my head, you could set up what is called a MultiSig wallet.
For example, it could have 3 private keys, and at any time 2 would be required to sign a transaction. You keep one, your solicitor another and your next of kin (executor?) the third.
You could complicate things more by further encrypting the private keys and giving the encryption keys to some other trusted party.
In the end I believe you do have to trust that the whole group of trusted parties won't conspire and steal from you...
There is interest in this subject and more solutions will be created, if they have not already.
In case of forgotten / lost private keys, bitcoin will remain dormant indefinitely. In other words bitcoin is lost.
I would imagine if 2 out of 3 of the keys are lost, the bitcoin is lost.Not being smart, but what happens if my solicitor loses the password? He won't know he has lost it until he goes looking for it which will be when I buy the farm.
What happens then?
Firefly.
If that is accurate it is a flaw of the inheritance and CAT system, and not a flaw of Bitcoin.You could be doing your beneficiaries a great dis-service given the great volatility of its value. At probate, the market value of your bitcoin could be €1 million, but by the time it sold its market value might be only €10,000, leaving your beneficiaries with a €330,000 CAT bill to pay, but no funds!
That is not a fair comparison. Your family home could also be hit by one of those crashes. Galway makes a good point but it is really just an example of the general consensus that currently bitcoin is a terrible store of value. As I asked before, who is saving for a deposit on a house in bitcoin?If that is accurate it is a flaw of the inheritance and CAT system, and not a flaw of Bitcoin.
If you get €1m of Ryanair shares at probate, 3 flights crash the next day and the value drops to €10k, do you still have to pay €330,000 CAT bill?
Off topic, but this is a very funny question to ask any long time bitcoiner.As I asked before, who is saving for a deposit on a house in bitcoin?
I would say the technology is outdated already! If it keeps going at this rate we will probably need to burn the Amazon rainforest to keep mining!I would imagine if 2 out of 3 of the keys are lost, the bitcoin is lost.
As for the technology getting outdated, I doubt that can happen.
What about if I am not able to? What if the marbles start to get a bit loose. What happens then? I could easily just forget my passwordAnyway you would make at least annual audits of your backup plans would you not?
Not really. I am asking how can I pass on my bitcoins to my next of kin in any way that resembles a standard will.Now, what you appear to be really looking for is some kind of institutional and government reassurance am I correct? And this pushes us away from the bitcoin 'be your own bank' mentality.
I guess a custodial service like Coinbase could handle this but I can't see who would
a) Leave Bitcoins in their will
AND
b) Leave those Bitcoins on a third party custodial service.
It's a good question, I think up until now people were generally more concerned about whether bitcoin would be around next year than worrying about estate planning for decades ahead. ant dee has already given good responses, I'll add that multi-sig functionality is native to bitcoin itself, it's just not a feature provided by a company or a specific wallet, so it will be around for as long as bitcoin is. How you leverage that to protect your coins is up to you, the lengths you need to go to might depend on how many people you really trust, how much btc you have etc. You get to choose how many keys there are (the limit is 16 I think) and how many are required, If you create a multi-sig wallet that is 4 of 7 for example, you can afford to lose any 3 of the keys.
You could also use other techniques such as dead man's switches or time-locked transactions (which are also natively supported). It's for sure not straightforward to have a fool proof plan, but it's also flexible, you don't need to involve solicitors at all if you don't want to for example.
Let me try a different approach.I am asking how can I pass on my bitcoins to my next of kin in any way that resembles a standard will.
In any case, it is up to the receiver of the inheritance to accept a volatility risk or not.That is not a fair comparison. Your family home could also be hit by one of those crashes. Galway makes a good point but it is really just an example of the general consensus that currently bitcoin is a terrible store of value.
What about if I am not able to? What if the marbles start to get a bit loose. What happens then? I could easily just forget my password
Until, maybe, someone very smart comes along and creates code to make bitcoin estate planning resemble a standard will.
Then your Bitcoin join the 20+% of bitcoin already lost forever.
If such a mechanism ever comes into existence, the next step will be cyber criminals exploiting it to steal bitcoin.
I don't understand this to be honest. The 'very smart' part would be that it won't be exploitable. Like a public wallet address with 1000btc is not exploitable now unless you know the private keys.If such a mechanism ever comes into existence, the next step will be cyber criminals exploiting it to steal bitcoin.
I don't understand this to be honest. The 'very smart' part would be that it won't be exploitable. Like a public wallet address with 1000btc is not exploitable now unless you know the private keys.
It will not be centralised, there will be no single point of failure to target and empty all the 'bitcoin wills'.
Code developers take all this into consideration, we are not talking about creating a centralised company called 'Coinbase Wills' that controls a big honeypot.
Cyber criminals already have centralised targets to attack and do so non stop. All that it does for the end-user is increased security.
Put your bitcoins on a hardware wallet.I agree and in fact it sounds extremely complicated for the average person to get right and very easy to get wrong.
If I cannot easily pass an asset on to my next of kin then it fails a very basic test to me which is that it is a store of value.
In my opinion the only way I can agree that it is a store of value is if used temporarily, i.e. it is bought with FIAT and immediately used to buy something else.
How do you plan on transferring ownership of your cloud based email, your facebook or the www domains you own?
Well, like i said before, there is none, until someone very smart figures it out!So what process or solution are you proposing that would allow a third party with no access to the original owner's private keys to claim or transfer ownership of another user's bitcoin? I just don't see how that couple be possible and verifiable without being wide open to exploitation.
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