“Most people seek out estate planning advice after major life events like marriage, childbirth and loss of a loved one...or increasing Bitcoin prices.”
The number of people seeking estate planning services has soared with Bitcoin’s prices continuing to rise. However, digital currencies don’t have to comprise most of your net worth to benefit from estate planning.
The Coin Telegraph’s recent article, “Lawyer Says Dead Man’s Switch Not Best Option for Digital Asset Inheritance,” says don’t use a “dead man’s switch.”
A dead man’s switch, where cryptocurrencies are automatically transferred to the heir’s account upon death, has been a popular solution for estate issues involving digital currency. However, this strategy requires all the heirs to be able to manage their private key. A private key is a secret number that allows bitcoins to be spent.
It is not possible to generate their private keys and give it to them. Just like a single physical key that opened one locked box, if the key is lost, it’s game over. The owner of the assets can make a new key for her heirs every time assets are bought, sold, or moved. If your heirs are well-versed in cryptocurrency, there’d be no problem. However, most people who will be inheriting digital assets are not ready to manage them.
Because activating a dead man’s switch requires the owner not to access the network for a certain period, it creates incentives for people to keep the owner from accessing the network. This is still new technology, and there’s no back-up or “do over” with cryptocurrency: it’s all based on algorithms. If you don’t have all the right pieces—like the right private key—you have no access to those assets.
Cryptocurrency transactions are non-reversible, and those assets, unlike funds in a bank, are impossible to recover.
Smart contract technology that enables automatic transfer of funds should be tested more thoroughly to be trusted with assets in estate planning.
Bitcoin, the oldest Blockchain-based cryptocurrency, debuted in 2009 and, according to the media, has only started to be considered as “going mainstream” this year.
The key to cryptocurrency inheritance is to ensure that your heir knows what you have, by giving him an updated inventory of your digital assets and be certain that your heir knows how to access cryptocurrency.
Reference: The Coin Telegraph (October 28, 2017) “Lawyer Says Dead Man’s Switch Not Best Option for Digital Asset Inheritance”
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