WHAT HAPPENS TO A CRYPTOCURRENCY INVESTMENT IN EVENT OF SUDDEN DEMISE
This might sound somewhat gloomy but it’s a fact of life. Human beings are not immortal and have to die someday, anyday and anytime for that matter , it could happen suddenly and most at times nobody is really ready to pass on.
That is why people make wills. Cryptocurrency investment is the newest form of investment that is taking over the world. As at the time of writing this post cryptocurrency market capitalization is about 100 billion dollars and growing, with access to the internet anybody can invest in cryptocurrency and it doesn’t need a huge capital base to start,you can even start an investment in crytocurrency without money, perfect example is steem.
WHAT HAPPENS TO A CRYPTOCURRENCY INVESTMENT IN EVENT OF SUDDEN DEMISE
This post is inspired by a true life happening, in a cryptocurrency whatsapp group someone asked for help on how to recover a late elder brother’s cryptocurrency portfolio that ran into thousands of dollars, the deceased was the sole breadwinner of the family and was involved in a fatal accident that took his life. Most of his investments are in cryptocurrency because he was a very active trader and its all probably lost now as the family have no idea on how to access that part of his investment.
This got me thinking, how does one guarantee that his/her investment in cryptocurrency benefits those that it’s supposed to in a situation like this. Main stream traditional investments in companies, real estates,insurance etc have documents to back up investments and can be transferred to next of kin if the primary investor is no more. A person can make a will detailing what investment goes to who and with this, one is to a very large extent guaranteed that his/her investment will be passed on as intended. So what about crypto assets ?
I don’t know if they are various solutions to this out there but the one thing that came to mind was encrypting a file with all the digital assets, relevant online accounts and their corresponding passwords and sending it to the next of kin’s email and then leaving the password of the encrypted file in a will with the lawyer just as one would do with offline investments.
I would love to get more options on this, please drop a comment if you have a suggestion.
Yep creating a will with a smart contract, or maybe raise this to those wallets out there to have a will service. This is a very important issue that needs to be raised
Well, it's a really interesting question, and one that I guess could be solved with a smart contract. I'm not quite sure how it would work, maybe there could be some kind of dead-mans trigger, which requires certain inputs to occur. I wonder if there is a business opportunity for someone to create an semi-automated system which does actually have human interaction for being able to do a manual check? I guess if public records were on the blockchain it may make it easier (until some hacker decided to mark you as dead, then marry your sister or something...?). It's a really interesting concept, and one which I look forward to seeing solved.
ya smart contract could work but like you said even if the public records were on blockchain its still would be susceptible to hacking, hopefully as crypto investment gets even more popular we'll get to see this solved.
good post.
follow me @goga
Blockchain smart contract / incorporating within a corporation with instructions on how the f*** to get it sold haha.
Might be worth passing the knowledge down to family members as well I guess....
i still think this is the best, get all digital assets encrypted in a file and send to next of kin's email and give the password of the file to a lawyer. that should work.
One guarantees one's family will have acces to the wealth when one trusts his family with both his or her private and public keys.
yea and hope the trust is mutual, wouldn't feel good being defrauded by family, stories of that sort abound.
As with a regular will the private & public keys as well as recovery codes if any should be written and given to the trustee or executor of the will. these are the only access points to the investments and even if the owner were alive and lost these his/he investments cannot be recovered. It also provides some security as some wild family member cannot access and run off with the investments like has happened before (knew a guy that cleaned out his parents and vanished for about nine years before he got picked up on radar in another country.).
my thoughts exactly
That why i always tell people to write down all there crytocurreny asset. Put it in ur dairy and show it to ur spouse most time because crytocurrency does not have next of kin. So be guided. Thks
Maybe a service like "Crypto from the Crypt" that would be set up by the currency holder and in the event of a large period of inactivity send them a notice that if they did not take action, their crypto would be converted back to fiat and sent to their bank account if one was associated with the account - or have lengthy inactivity trigger emails that when not responded to within a certain period of time (therefore assuming the person has decease), send a pre-made email and instructions form the account holder to their heirs with detailed instructions on how to claim the accounts.
i think the second suggestion you raised is a good one. but the "crypto from the crypt" option i wouldn't be comfortable with coz it involves the bank. depending on the large period of inactivity before conversion and sending to bank something might happen that lets the bank claim it. i am not sure here but i think after the next of kin what is in a deceased bank account, the account is closed, what if this happens before the large period of inactivity?