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  • Apinya Kamon
  • Posted Articles: 13
  • Last Posted: 2017-07-03 09:51:41
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Bequeathing Bitcoin When a Holder Passes Away

2017-02-21 09:14:35

Every person wants to ensure that his family will still have a comfortable life even after he dies. There are set of rules, regulations, or protocols when it comes to bank accounts, real estate properties, or investments. But handing down the ownership of the digital currency is another story. Also known as wallets, bitcoin addresses contain public keys. However, a person can only access these addresses if they have the matching private key. There is no way to inverse a private key. Therefore, if the user have lost his private keys, the bitcoin inside the wallet is lost as well.



How does a user entrust his bitcoins once he passes away?



First and foremost, it is vital to maintain the private key on a piece of paper and then put that paper inside a safety deposit box or safe. Give the access to both private and public keys to their loved ones. They can pair it on any wallet services including blockchain.info. Needless to say that if anyone gets hold of these keys, they can access the wallets, too. One can also remove all the virtual currencies from the online wallet and into the cold wallet, in which the user can wipe out all footprints of the private key and keep it away from the storage.



Now, send these access to beneficiaries ahead of time. Nobody knows when and/or where he will leave the earth. But, using the cryptocurrency, one can prepare to send those to his heir’s current wallet address via the time-locked dealing. A user can set that this transaction will occur after a specific period of time, pre-signed, and then delete the entire content of that key. For instance, beneficiaries will receive the bitcoin after ten years, presuming the recipient still owns the same address.



There are various ault services provided by digital asset exchange company such as Coinbase. The facility works similar to paper backups wherein most of the person’s digital currencies is stored fully offline in different physical vaults and safe deposit boxes. It can also be owned by many people, making his beneficiary a co-owner. That beneficiary can access bitcoins within 48 hours.