We Are All Mortal, Anyone can Die at Any Moment: Who will get Your Bitcoins when You Die?

Consider your mortality and prepare accordingly, death can strike at any time. Who will get your Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency when you die? Who will get your private keys? How do you assure they come to the right person? How do you arrange handing private keys over?

We are all mortal and however much we want to live forever, none of us will. Indeed, anyone can die at any time. It isn't necessarily a matter of old age or illness, situations where we would at least theoretically have the time to prepare for our demise. An accident can strike in a moment, in a most surprising manner. There are no guarantees in life or for life. The only thing we certainly know is that we will die. Not how or when. But death is inevitable.

Of course there is the matter of being mentally prepared for one's own death. That's something – if all goes well – developing during very old age or a slowly killing disease. And that's when it is needed. In an accidental death at young age, there is no time to develop that readiness - and there is no need for it. However, at every death there are practical consequences in the world of the living. Each and every one of us can and should make preparations for that. That is, we should make arrangements for the consequences (in the world of the living) of our own death!

Have you written a will or (preferably) otherwise made arrangements for your property in case of your death? If not, you ought to do so soonest. Don't leave it to law, disputing heirs or courts to decide. It is your property, you should decide, and the transfer should be as smooth and unnoticed as possible.

Do you have business secrets or other secrets only you know of but which should be handed over to someone else when you die? Don't let such secrets die with you, just because you are too lazy or too afraid of thinking of your own death to make proper preparations! And don't record secrets in a way where you have no control of to whom they will come after you. Make arrangements so they are reaching the right person(s) at the right time. But do it now. If you postpone it, it might become too late.

In our digital age, many secrets are passwords or locked with passwords. If nobody gets the passwords after you, whatever those passwords would unlock will be lost. If that is what you want, just let it be. But if you want someone to take over what there is, you must make preparations to hand over the passwords to the right person in the event of your demise.

In the age of cryptocurrency this is even more important. If an ordinary bank account is unclaimed for a certain time, the funds will be taken. They might go to government, to the bank, or some other entity as prescribed by law in different bank jurisdictions. It might, however, be possible for a legally recognised heir to claim the account without any real information about it, if he or she just knows where it is. With cryptocurrency, however, if your private key is lost, the funds it would unlock are lost forever, with no possibility whatsoever for anyone to reclaim them. But surely, you don't want your funds to be lost. In the case of your death, you want to make them available to the individual or entity of your own choice! But it comes to you to prepare that, so the information of the private key is made available to the right party at the right time.

Whatever you have, property or secrets or both, make sure to make arrangements for how they are handled after your death. Don't postpone such preparations until it is too late! Death can strike at any moment.

For most of us, there are also some secrets and information we want to die with us. Old letters, emails, perhaps certain photos, things being so private that we don't want anyone else ever to take part of them. That is also something to prepare for. Make arrangements so these things are indeed destroyed in the event of your death. You don't want curious heirs or journalists, or whatever it can be, digging in your too private material.

As far as such material can be digitally stored, the most easy way to handle it is to store it encrypted, with a password you keep in memory only. When you die the password will be lost, and the encrypted material will be inaccessible.

Of course there is always the risk that future computer capacity might be able to crack the password, so it is even better if nobody has access to the material even in encrypted form.

If it is really important that the material disappears forever, keep it encrypted somewhere in the cloud where stored files are deleted after a certain time of inactivity. But encrypt them first, upload them after that. Don't trust the encryption of a storage service.

For small files, a free mail address is sufficient (use Tor or a VPN to access it). You can store encrypted material as attachments. The email account is deleted after a certain time of inactivity. Your files disappear when you die and stop accessing the email address. But choose a provider that doesn't keep inactive email accounts for too long and keep the password to the email account in your memory only.

In a similar way, it is also possible to use a paid-for address or storage service. It might even give you better control. Your account is deleted when you stop paying. But remember that there is a paper trail from the payments. Someone trying to map your online life from your payment history, might find out where you have the account and try to get access to it. Except when payments can be made with cryptocurrency, free accounts can for this reason be held more private than paid ones. Unless you figure out some other way to pay without a paper trail leading to you – or from you to the payee.

(This article is based on material previously published in Meriondho Leo.)

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