
Ask HN: How to pass cryptocurrency assets in a will? - coryl
Does anyone have any good ideas on how one would pass on cryptocurrencies to family in the event of death?<p>I imagine you just need to pass on the type of wallet used, and the mnemonic recovery words so they can access the coins.<p>But you can&#x27;t just leave those words in a plaintext will obviously. Any thoughts?
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thatha7777
Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme (ssss) would allow you to encrypt your recovery
words in such a way that you could distribute the encrypted recovery words to
N parties, and require the knowledge of K parties (n < k) to decrypt the
secret.

ssss doesn't rely on any trusted party--for example, you could split into 5
"shares", and set a threshold of 3. Then distribute the shared amongst 5 of
your most trusted friends (selecting them in such a way that it's unlikely
they'll collude), and instruct them to only use their share of the secret when
they've confirmed your death. 3 of them would have to "come together"
(physically, or over a shared terminal or screen) and enter their "shares" to
decrypt your recovery words. However, this would cause all 3 of them to know
your recovery words.

To get around that, don't encrypt the recovery words themselves using ssss.
Instead, encrypt the recovery words using a modern, strong, encryption
algorithm, using a randomly generated key. Then use ssss to encrypt the
randomly generated key, and share that.

Only give the ciphertext of the recovery words to the intended recipient upon
death.

Instead of friends, you could also split the secret between your executor and
the intended recipient/family remember, requiring consent from both.

Whatever you do, don't forget to write thorough instructions :)

~~~
kilimchoi
To add to this, you can instead use the multisig wallet and add your family
members but in this case you are not splitting the private key amongst n
members but you're creating n unique keys that's required to sign before the
owners can complete a transaction. When someone dies in your family, you can
remove that person from the wallet.

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IncRnd
It's no different from leaving any bank account to an heir. You can leave the
key to a safety deposit box that the named heir has to physically be present
to claim.

You should be careful about using technical solutions, like secret sharing,
since this is not a technical problem. It is a legal problem, and you don't
want parties to conspire to obtain the property contrary to your wishes.

~~~
thatha7777
There is something ironic about trusting your decentralized cryptocurrencies
to a centralized institution (like a bank that offers safety deposit boxes).

Someone who keeps enough assets in cryptocurrencies to want to include them in
their will, chances are that they have a preference towards decentralized
systems (or a distrurst/dislike of current authority/government-based
systems). Nothing stops a government from forcing a bank to turn over the
contents of a safety deposit box.

I definitely know 5 people that I can trust to not collude, even in the face
of a subpoena or some government-issued directive.

~~~
IncRnd
Do what works best in your own personal situation, secret sharing, leave a
riddle that only the specific heir can answer in order to find a location,
safety deposit box, etc.

Just be aware that if you are leaving anything significant, people many times
act differently when seeing dollar signs. Not just collusion, but refusing to
divulge their secret without themselves getting paid.

Either way, you are trusting someone to one degree or another. If the expected
passing is decades away, people losing their key material is a significant
risk.

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tabeth
Easiest thing is to liquidate and leave those assets in a will. Anything else
has a non-trivial chance of loss without recourse (unlike liquidated
currency). That being said if you had that much money in crytocurrencies you
probably wouldn't want to leave it to a bank.

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gesman
Store them in fully reconstructable deterministic wallet (the one that can be
rebuilt from scratch using long enough passphrase only). Split passphrase in 3
pieces (A, B, C) and store it in an envelope with instructions in three
different, unrelated legal firms to be given to your heirs in case of your
death.

Firm 1: A,B

Firm 2: C,B

Firm 3: A,C

This way:

\- Your assets are protected from banks getting hold of your assets (including
safety deposit boxes) in a future for whatever mayhem reasons.

\- You assets are protected in case if any of these firms gets uncooperative,
hacked, robbed or blackmailed to disclose password. Single firm cannot
reconstruct your wallet - it doesn't have enough information.

\- It's enough to have cooperation of 2 out of 3 firms = 2 letters to fully
reconstruct the wallet.

------
nyolfen
put the mnemonic on a piece of paper in a safety deposit box

