{"id":35943,"date":"2016-03-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bravenewcoin.com\/insights\/gone-forever-bitcoin-altcoins-assettokens-and-death\/"},"modified":"2016-03-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T11:00:00","slug":"gone-forever-bitcoin-altcoins-assettokens-and-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bravenewcoin.com\/insights\/gone-forever-bitcoin-altcoins-assettokens-and-death","title":{"rendered":"Gone Forever: \u200bBitcoin, AltCoins, Asset\u2010Tokens, & Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you died tomorrow would your family inherit your bitcoin, altcoins, and asset-tokens? The answer depends on you. Legally the answer is yes, unless your passwords, passphrases, and key locations die with you. Without them, your crypto-assets will be inaccessible. Like gold coins buried in a meadow, your family may know the treasure exists, but they\u2019ll never be able to access it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this wasn\u2019t a big deal, before bitcoin, altcoins, and asset-tokens had \u201creal\u201d value. However with bitcoin\u2019s current valuation exceeding US$6 billion, ethereum exceeding US$1 billion, and asset-tokens being developed with millions of venture capital funding, simply losing these assets is no longer an acceptable outcome. Not for you, not for your heirs.<\/p>\n

But estate planning isn\u2019t fun. Mortality. Succession. Who gets what. It\u2019s easier to ignore, postpone, and delay thinking about these things. However, unlike many other assets, there are no fail-safes with these coins and tokens. When your assets are held by a bank (or any third party), a court can simply order the bank to give those assets an estate executor (the person who controls the distribution of assets) or even directly to named heirs. But with assets like bitcoin, a court order is meaningless. Not because these assets are outside of the legal system, as some say, but because there is no one to order. Without access to private keys, no one can comply. It\u2019s a matter of technology, not will.<\/p>\n

Historically, we\u2019ve ignored succession planning because the risk was too great. In order for our bitcoin to pass to our heirs, we\u2019d have to give them access to our wallets and private keys. But that would give them equal control, with the power to take the assets at anytime. Or more likely, the power to get hacked. Today there is a better way. We are now designing systems that allow those we love to securely access these assets when we pass, but not before.<\/p>\n

Using a combination of multisignature addresses, hardware wallets, open source software wallets, and policy controls, we\u2019re now able to design systems that can provide complete control to the individual but divided control in case of emergency – like death, coma, or brain injury. And while these are things we don\u2019t want to think about, we need to do it anyway. A few hours spent planning today could mean millions for your family later.<\/p>\n

Designing Your Plan:<\/h6>\n

Step 1: Figure out what you have and what you need to protect. Make a list of your total current holdings, where they\u2019re held (wallets, exchanges, etc) and the corresponding current value. It\u2019s best to do this step offline, as this is sensitive information.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Separate your assets into tiers. Decide how much you want to keep easily accessible, like petty cash, and how much to keep in long-term storage that you\u2019re unlikely to touch for years. There may be one or more intermediary tiers between these two extremes.<\/p>\n

Step 3: For each of the tiers, develop a plan with the technology, people, and process that ensures a careful balance between security, ease of use, resilience (backup), and survivability (estate planning). Each tier will have a different balance, for example you might use a single signer mobile wallet for your petty cash but for long-term storage you could use a multi-signature software solution that integrates with your favorite hardware wallet.<\/p>\n