Passing on crypto when you die

[simon43]

I'm not planning to drop dead just yet, but who knows?

 

Thinking about the procedures to leave your $$$ to your loved ones when you die, it seems to be rather complicated when one's assets are held in a Thai bank account or Thai shares, or where you have assets both in Thailand and your home country.

 

This is particularly an issue for me because I'm no longer married, and have no close partner or family.  When I die, I'd like to simply split my financial assets equally between my 4 children.

 

Seems to me that if I buy crypto for long-term ownership (ie not quick buy and sell), then I could simply provide the crypto addresses in a will/document that is lodged with my lawyer.  My kids in the UK would then be able to discretely transfer said crypto to their own wallets without any intervention of an expensive lawyer, nor delays or probate etc.

 

Sounds like a plan?  (I realise that all is lost if the crypto addresses are 'lost' - hence the importance of providing a back-up store with these details).

[cookai]

Google has a setting for inactive accounts ( i.e.  you're dead ) and who should get access after how long.  Set this up, then set up a Google Doc with instructions on how to access your Crypto. 

[easyridercc]

Do you trust putting your private keys in will that lawyer holds or in Google doc that could be accessed if your Gmail account is hacked? I personally don't.

Another idea is hardware wallet and put the pin in your will that is kept with lawyer. At least the two can then be kept in seperate locations and both are needed to gain access.

Sent from my E5803 using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[12DrinkMore]

19 hours ago, cookai said:

Google has a setting for inactive accounts ( i.e.  you're dead ) and who should get access after how long.  Set this up, then set up a Google Doc with instructions on how to access your Crypto. 

 

Thanks for that.

 

I also like the delete function if the account goes inactive.

 

 

[tpkhk]

I'd second the above idea of the hardware wallet with the lawyer.  Matter of fact, you may want to go one further for each beneficiary, so they aren't dependent on each other to access/divide.  The passphrase for each wallet can be retained by you, in places that are made known to each of the beneficiaries.  

 

I noticed Lazada now carries the Ledger Nano S.....also Groov.

[chingching]

How old are you're kids now?  Old enough to know what crypto is?   If you have ethereum you might just put it into a smart contract, say if your eth balance is not touched for a period of one year , it goes to their eth accounts.

That way u can spend or deposit in your account any way you like,  check in once a year if your still alive.

 

Coinbase might have some setup for inactive accounts.  

I think haobtc had beneficiary accounts, but that was before the crackdown.

Edited December 4, 2017 by chingching
grammar

[sometimewoodworker]

On 01/12/2017 at 10:54 AM, simon43 said:

Seems to me that if I buy crypto for long-term ownership (ie not quick buy and sell), then I could simply provide the crypto addresses in a will/document that is lodged with my lawyer.  My kids in the UK would then be able to discretely transfer said crypto to their own wallets without any intervention of an expensive lawyer, nor delays or probate etc.

That has a chance of being either a very good or an extremely bad plan. Crypto assets could increase in value, be worth nothing, or anything between.

 

although the algorithm underlying bitcoin and the block chain  has so far proven to be good there is no guarantee that it will continue to uncrackable.

 

also governments want to have access to money flow information so they probably will in the long term. What is true today may well not be true tomorrow.

[realenglish1]

Crypto is a bad idea You can either get rich or get wiped out over night

Leave it in an account spend  100 dollars on a will  and be done with it This is easy and safe

[Shiver]

4 hours ago, easyridercc said:

Do you trust putting your private keys in will that lawyer holds or in Google doc that could be accessed if your Gmail account is hacked? I personally don't.

Another idea is hardware wallet and put the pin in your will that is kept with lawyer. At least the two can then be kept in seperate locations and both are needed to gain access.

Sent from my E5803 using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
 

 

This was my immediate reaction also.  You can give your public address to anyone to verify the contents, but it's the private key that is the critical information.  If you leave it with a lawyer, then you're trusting them with (potentially) something too big to resist when he sees an easy dream yacht and private island.

 

Maybe you should give your 4 kids 1/3rd of the passphrase each, so if one should not be present or pass on unexpectedly, the other 3 could get together and put the pieces together.  By that measure you could give a lawyer part of the passphrase but not enough for them to steal it - but enough to stop a single bad actor.  If they all turn on you then you still lose.

If you can time lock it then nobody (including yourself) could get access to it until that time had expired.  Notionally you could still use that as collateral if all parties prove to collectively have enough information to access it after a specified time.

 

So yes, your idea does hold water, but there have been some monumental disasters with people not paying attention to  detail.  Maybe you could set up a wallet address and just put $10 in it and ask them to test out the access.  If that works then send a bit more and wait for it to verify, to be sure what you think you're sending is going to where you're thinking it's going.  Then you can add the rest.

Probably best to start with a fresh computer that's never been on the internet (keyloggers/malware etc), not using copy/paste and a few other precautions you can learn about with a search engine or YouTube.  A hardware wallet can be convenient too, but your private key is *everything*.  You may wish to spread it out over different continents, and think about how you'd deal with an issue where someone has a gun to your head, or to all your kids heads.  It takes some planning to be immune, but not so much to avoid being the easiest target.  Another thing to consider is splitting up your stash into several wallets, so even a complete failure of procedure can be contained.

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Shiver

[SiSePuede419]

Crypto?

 

That's not real.  It's fake. ?

 

If it's real, tell me where it's located.  Also, where did it come from.

 

Be specific. ?

 

This is real money:

 

 

[Sapporillo]

8 hours ago, SiSePuede419 said:

Crypto?

 

That's not real.  It's fake. ?

 

If it's real, tell me where it's located.  Also, where did it come from.

 

Be specific. ?

 

This is real money:

 

 

Is it? I see a piece of paper, with the number '100' written on it. 

 

AFAIK, there are no gold-backed currencies anymore, so if you wanna talk about "real" money, gold and silver come to mind, but certainly not a so called "fiat currency". 

[chingching]

 

 

[Sapporillo]

4 hours ago, chingching said:

 

 

Very true. However, bitcoin (and other virtual currencies) aren't backed by anything other than consumer confidence, just like fiat currencies, which means they could also became worthless in very little time. Personally, I don't think that virtual currencies are gonna disappear completely again, but some probably will, and I don't have the technical knowledge or insight to be sure that the blockchain technology won't be outdated in a few years. What if a newer, better technology comes up? ...

[Shiver]

Blockchain isn't the only way even today.  There is a method called "Directed Acyclic Graph" (DAG for short), which has as different set of benefits and constraints.  ByteBall uses it to good effect.  I think (not sure) that IOTA uses it too.  It looks like a VHS/Betamax thing though, where blockchain will probably prevail because it got the network effect of popularity, and a lot more people have heard of it, even if only a minority have a decent understanding of what's under the hood (which isn't necessary anyhow - you don't need to understand it, you just need to understand what it *is*). 

 

For those curious, in simple terms it's a way to have an accounting ledger that is public and takes care of a problem known as "double spending", where people think of digital information as easily copy-able.  In the use case of money, copying is a no no, as you could have 100 baht and keep re-spending it wherever you go, and nobody would know which is the original one and who owns it.  Blockchain is a way to ensure the integrity of transactions without a central authority having to be trusted not to print more than they say, and ownership changes are recorded not by some super high tech black box software (it's wide open for any curious minds to inspect or improve).  It does it by making it trustless - that is, all participants can check and verify all of everything if they want to (that's why there's a lot of processing power involved).  You get the game theory known as "Prisoners Dilemma", which to use a metaphor "it's only when a mosquito lands on your own junk that you realise that violence isn't always the best solution" - translates to - stealing money at the risk of making all your own money valueless makes a risk model that ensures all participants have an interest in being a 'good actor'.

 

I'm as certain as anyone can be that it isn't going away.  Being software however it can evolve it's standards and behaviours, so it's highly likely that what we know of today will be barely recognisable in a decade or two.  As government fiat is soaked up by open source coins/tokens, the way we do things will change, as will the power base.  If you take the exponential rise of crypto as a chart and invert it, you could say that is the USD (or any other gov't fiat) being shown in its true colours.  The Bolivar or Zimbabwe dollar are just advanced cases, but all of them go that way eventually.

 

I don't see things like Bitcoin being a good currency any time soon whatever the merits of the tech, or at least not until all the fiat that is prepared to move has already done so, and people are prepared to spend without thinking that it would be better to wait another day as it will be more value tomorrow.  At the same time that makes it an excellent asset as a store of wealth.  It can do what gold can do for the most part, except it's programmable, portable, invisible etc.  Ironically, people who like physical gold should find a friend in Bitcoin, as it has the potential to crush the paper gold manipulation and let physical gold rise to its true market value, which surely must be at least several orders of magnitude more than the markets are pretending.

<6 months ago I knew in person only 3 people that had any crypto, despite 6.5 years of evangalising.  Now in December 2017 I don't do that, they find me, and I'm trying to get people up to speed so that they can take on some of the load of helping their friends instead of taking all of my time. The price seems to be somewhat similar in growth (if you can discount the speculation).

 

[Shiver]

21 hours ago, Sapporillo said:

Very true. However, bitcoin (and other virtual currencies) aren't backed by anything other than consumer confidence, just like fiat currencies, which means they could also became worthless in very little time. Personally, I don't think that virtual currencies are gonna disappear completely again, but some probably will, and I don't have the technical knowledge or insight to be sure that the blockchain technology won't be outdated in a few years. What if a newer, better technology comes up? ...

 

To use USD as an example, the quantity has increased 4x in a decade.  If they didn't do that then it wouldn't lose value.  They do though, and they have to in order to maintain power.  We're told inflation targets are say 2%, yet we all know that the cost of consumables is not far off 100% per decade, and nobody is making a fuss.  Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it.

If you pick a crypto, then choosing one that has a finite quantity would be a pre-requisite, otherwise the same dilution would occur.  Maybe as a currency it's good to have as much as is required for fungibility, but nobody should be storing their wealth in fiat.  A petty cash float with an ATM card is all that is required if your main store is something liquid (a rare piece of art wouldn't be something you could chip a piece off and turn into baht, though people have their reasons for wanting it, and presumably have several layers of storage and liquidity).

As for a better tech than blockchain comes up then we can all move with the times.  Probably best not to get married to one technology.  Most people seem to have several wives during their lifetimes anyhow from what they tell me :)

[Shiver]

On 12/4/2017 at 8:36 PM, SiSePuede419 said:

Crypto?

 

That's not real.  It's fake. ?

 

If it's real, tell me where it's located.  Also, where did it come from.

 

Be specific. ?

 

This is real money:

 

 

 

The 'real' money there would be numbers in the Fed computers.  The piece of paper would be your claim on it.

 

Similarly, a private key printed on a piece of paper would be your claim to the numbers in the public network that manages the crypto system.

[chingching]

That was a good summary of a blockchain.  For those who are still unsure, you might consider looking at it this way.   
On January 1st  Put $1000 in a thai bank account ,   You have $10  , in another 3 weeks or so.
On January 1st buy one ounce of gold  ~ $1150,   now ~ 1264,   you have $115

On January 1st buy one btc. about $963.00    You have now $13,555   Plus,  depending on where you kept your bitcoin,  you also have $1448 worth of bitcoin cash,  and about $300 worth of btc-gold  

But if u had gotten a bit lucky and bought some other crypto currencies.  (all prices from jan 1, 2017) coin mkt cap historical
MONACOIN  was  0.023 cents,  now $17.
VERTCOIN  was  0.034 cents  ,  now $8.77
NEO (antshares) was 0.14 cents, now  $36.00,  (a few months ago $50.00)
those are the top 3 gainers from Jan 1.  

But everyone talks about Ethereum,  how did Ethereum do,  was $8.26,  now $430. 

In terms of profit,  about 12 coins did better than ETH,  about 45 coins did better than BITCOIN 

If you had bought the top 100 coins by mkt cap on Jan 1,   Eleven would have lost you money (but not zero).   Six, I can't find so maybe they disappeared, or maybe they changed their name.  So 83 would have been a profit.  and a nice profit.  Monacoin mentioned above is 72000 percent gain.

p.s.  I bought NEO (old name Antshares)  in 2016 at the ICO,  it was very cheap.  Then it hit the exchanges, up about 150%.  I wanted to sell it, but my coins were still in the antshares wallet, and I needed to claim them.  The webpage was Chinese. I was very new, and this was my first ICO.  By the time I figured out how to get my coins to an exchange, they were about 70% of what I paid.  I held on for a few more weeks, but capitulated and sold them for a loss.
 

[Shiver]

I would like to add to what chingching said, that although there is a lot of room for growth (100's or 1000's percent is not at all unusual), the falls come fast and hard (usually 5 minutes after you take your eyes off it and decide to get some sleep, or there will be some event in your day that was unexpected, and it *knows* that you've been staring at the screen for 36 hours straight since you were sure it was imminent) because there's so much Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).  So if you decide you want to dabble, it really would pay to have mentally written off anything you put in before hand so that you don't end up being the 'weak hands' that the scalpers and whales of the industry like to shake to get some change out of everyone's pockets.

 

In my own case, because I invested relatively early, I had to sit out the Bitcoin bear that lasted 18 months back in 2014-15.  That was an 85% draw down from peak to trough.  It hit around $1163 when it was just a baby, and probably worth less than $50 at that time.  I didn't have the sense to sell, but I did have the sense to hold tight and wait.  I didn't get into it for money, but for belief in getting some independence back from Government, to not fund wars etc.  In the event it saved my financial butt and provided handsomely for me, and the market has evolved into something very different to what the popular reasons where then.

 

Just this morning Bitcoin topped $14,000.  That's way over priced in my book (but not for long - there have been some very interesting developments in the last week alone), and yet it could perhaps even double or close to it in a small space of time.  Because that would be *hugely* overvalued it will almost certainly have what only the most creative could call a correction, and the rest will call it a crash.  This is the time the shoeshine man would be giving share tips and everyone has shares.  That's when the mettle gets tested, and when it finally *is* worth that, it'll stroll past it and take some more leaps higher.

That said, if you wanted to get out now only to see it add another x thousand USD, will anyone be thinking "couldda wouldda shouldda"? or saying "It's okay, I got a decent return on my money, got my investment back and have a modest free ride from here on, and I'll forget about it for 3-5 years"?

 

None of us know where it's going, and it goes without saying that this is not advice, but I am just trying to pre-empt some of the experiences that most people will be able to relate to and minimise the emotional impact it could have.

 

Just one last observation about this market space:  We don't know yet if we're looking at USD 'valuation' or if that is completely irrelevant and what we're actually looking at is just adoption rate, and the USD is a side effect and is not a decision factor at all going forward.  That's a hard one to get your head around if you've lived all your life thinking bank  notes are security (which is pretty much all of us if we followed conventional indoctrination).  In Thailand however, it's not hard to find people who lived in the village in the last 1-2 generations that grew up without using money at all, and it was a very strange concept to be told it was 'real' when rice, water, frogs, leaves and gold were real....everybody knew that back then.  It was 'common' sense.

 

Edited December 7, 2017 by Shiver

[surinteacher2016]

put it in a safety deposit box with instructions. dont leave wiht a lawyer

[chingching]