Inheritance is not easy at the best of times, but when it comes to digital assets things get even more complicated. The fact that crypto wallets are mostly anonymous and require a private key to be accessed does not simplify matters at all.
Recently Matthew Mellon, a prominent US-based investor, passed away leaving a fortune in crypto behind. Because Mellon didn’t leave any information about his private key, which leaves the wallet inaccessible, his estimated fortune of $500 million in digital assets has vanished into thin air.
Data from Chinalysis claims that approximately a quarter of bitcoin that are in circulation are lost to all. The firm believes that the total value of this bitcoin sum is around $23.5 billion.
Thinking ahead is always adviced, no matter what area we take into consideration, so figuring out a strategy for a scenario is vital if keeping the acquired cryptos in the family or handing them over to a friend or charity is desired.
What options does one have if they are concerned with the inheritance of their digital assets? There is always the choice to do it the old-fashioned way. Take that quill and parchment and write down all the necessary information required to access the crypto wallet. After that this information should be stored in a safe place, such as a safety deposit box in a bank. This is one way of going about the matter.
Another way that this can be done is essentially the same idea, however instead of having to write the required information down by hand, it can be stored in special apps that offer a service, which discloses all the info on them to the people chosen by the user. This can be anything starting with passwords, to private keys. LifeBank is one such platform.
Last, but by no means, the least, is the entrusting the chosen person with all the info during one's lifetime, however this method, naturally, requires unfathomable trust, since, with the info at hand, the chosen person has equal access to the digital assets.
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