Is your crypto safe if something happens to you? | Hacker News Reader

Is your crypto safe if something happens to you?

10 pointstinymile24 comments

Curios question. What are you doing to make sure that your crypto is accesible to your family just in case something happens to you ? A few people I know gave their lawyers their secret keys. Others have tattoed their keys on their spouse.

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My keys and coins die with me. Sorry. That’s the rules. I don’t believe in generational wealth, nor do I plan on having any heirs.

At least donate them to a charity...

No, I don’t respect any charity enough to deserve the keys. Sorry.

Sorry this is off topic, but you seriously don't respect a single charity?

There are a ton of amazing charities doing incredibly underfunded work. Even small amounts of money can make a big difference.

I'm an academic researcher that studies nonprofits. I could recommend a few if you like?

I said I don’t respect any charity to give them my keys, not that I don’t respect any charity full stop. No thank you to your offer.

Like you say. The usual ways of handling things after you are gone. Tell your spouse and mother. Or entrust it in a sealed envelope with a lawyer. I already have "if anything should happen to me" letters, addressing other but similar issues, entrusted with a couple of close friends, which get updated every few years.

If I had enough cryptocurrency to worry about this issue, I'd consider just putting the keys in those, assuming they're very close friends. If not, this situation would actually be a pretty good use scenario for a multiple signer key system. And if you're worrying about the majority of people you could trust colluding against you, you probably have bigger problems.

There's a sheet of paper in my room with some random stuff written on it. If anyone smart enough gets it after my death will be able to buy some nice stuff.

This reminds me of Ron Swanson's will. LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YsUOCt22fU

Multi-sig. It can get complicated. But yeah there's actually pretty intense ways that are more secure than anything else available.

Where I think there is a problem is the non-reversible nature of transactions lend themselves to hostage-taking or adduction schemes by cartels and criminals etc... that's where I think crypto is very weak.

I got a will for this. Passwords go into an envelope. Pass it to them. Change passwords every time I update the will - new child, major debt paid off, new major asset.

I'm partially convinced this is a social engineering attempt but the will approach is nothing special. If you can't trust them with your crypto keys, you probably shouldn't trust them to manage your assets years after your death.

I wrote down one idea at https://boa.nu/blog/2021/03/peace-of-mind-backup/

Engrave your secret key on a sheet of metal, then store that in a bank deposit box. Add a note for your heirs. Include the contents of the box in the will.

Government bureaucrats are known to violate privacy and confiscating or arresting the contents of safety deposit boxes for political and other illegitimate reasons. Creditors, past spouses, tax authorities, frivolous lawsuits, courts, political opponents - when powerful enough can tap into your safety deposit box. Imagine the jackpot they’ll hit finding the magic words.

Yet people keep suggesting safety deposit boxes as a great solution.

Please stop.

Can you suggest better alternatives? I can't seem to think of any that will pass the metrics you laid down.

- Split words in 3 groups

- at least two groups are needed to assemble full phrase

- spread each 1/3 in different entities - ex: lawyer, safe, relative

- write a will authorizing kids access all 3 places

Thanks for responding. I understand it's all about threat modelling but would this necessarily be too much of an issue for a government to gain access to? The will would still describe how to bring all the information together.

The government doesn't necessarily need to know the location of each piece.

Of course bank safety deposit box is an easy target, but it's easy to spread more pieces among lawyers, family, even friends, even without them knowing what it is.

Attorney.

Can't be coerced into handing over information you leave them if it is involved in ongoing proceedings?

No, not in the USA under normal circumstances.

This is known as attorney-client privilege. They are required to maintain it even when you stop paying.

Thanks, I didn't realize this could be considered privileged. Seems pretty airtight then

Right. Unless they decided to arrest or attack attorney for some fake cause that enables them to dig deeper.

DiceKeys might be a good solution here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/dicekeys/dicekeys

Safety deposit box

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