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One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

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Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#71

Post by xkjkls »

DennisP wrote: post #9
thegreatpeter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they’re not yet so 1B of Bitcoin just went bye bye

Bitcoin has had multisig wallets for a long time: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multi-signature So it's not that hard to distribute several keys of the multisig to various heirs, who would have to agree on any transfers of funds. Another option is to keep each key in a different safe deposit box, with a will stating who gets access to the boxes.

Even with that, who do you trust to actually do any real transfer of your bitcoin in a fully secure way? Certainly not your lawyer, legal offices carry so many security problems. With a total of $1 billion at stake, there are some very real risks of attack.

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#72

Post by taywrobel »

senectus1 wrote: post #18
anonporridge wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he didn't have a backup plan in place to be accessible by his estate, then yes, the coins are dead. The coins dying with him are actually the best case scenario for all other holders. "Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone." - Satoshi Nakamoto

not really sustainable though is it?

I don’t see why unchecked and uncontrollable deflation of a “currency” wouldn’t be sustainable.

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#73

Post by lostmsu »

meowkit wrote: post #60
senectus1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really sustainable though is it?

Bitcoins can be split down to 8 decimal places. Given the current loss/mining rate its totally possible for BTC to become difficult to operate, but its also possible for the mining cap to be removed or for coins to be split further.

8 decimal places are already bordering insufficient: there are real world currencies whose unit costs less than 1 satoshi. See https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#74

Post by dheera »

sneak wrote: post #46
dheera wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose. But that means I must find an attorney first. What do they cost, like $900 an hour? ... I think that's part of what I'm trying to replace by technical means.

If you have enough cryptocurrency to worry about distributing upon your death, you have enough money to hire an attorney. (PS: they aren't $900/hour.)

Okay, I suppose I don't have that much crypto to worry about. I was thinking more along the lines of releasing controls to my websites I control, private repos, notebooks full of ideas, AWS keys, etc.

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#75

Post by bradleyjg »

anonporridge wrote: post #52
mynameishere wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some libertarian crank (I forget who) said that the best charity a person could do is to cash out their fortune and burn the paper dollars. This is a deflationary event and does just what you mention--gives everybody a little gift. Somehow a cynical suggestion like that is considered serious now. Because it is high-tech I guess.

Na, that's stupid with cash because we can arbitrarily print more of it. Any cash burning event would be of marginal collective contribution. It actually matters with bitcoin because of the hard supply cap. Every lost coin shrinks the pie.

“We” can arbitrarily print more Bitcoin or dollars. In either case you just need consensus among the correct group of people.

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#76

Post by BrissyCoder »

paulpauper wrote: post #48
macksd wrote: post #2

Now if I understand correctly, unless someone inherits a private key of his, his bitcoins are effectively dead now, right? I wonder how this will impact the economics of cryptocurrencies over time: I'm starting to see more and more reminders to congratulate dead people on work anniversaries on LinkedIn, and it feels quite morbid.

it effectively reduces the supply by .13%, which is tiny

If the same thing happened to total USD in circulation that would be $104000000000 going up in flames. Seems like a lot.

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#77

Post by paxys »

cirrus3 wrote: post #39
memco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is introducing a mechanism to allow access to certain data after passing: https://www.cultofmac.com/744814/apple-digital-legacy/ . It would be great to see more tools and services provide ways to pass on digital information so we don’t have too many haunted digital graveyards not too much digital treasure lying in waste.

I really like the idea of that upcoming service. But, not exactly where you want to store a piece of information worth $2B. A good old fashioned safety deposit box in a Swiss bank or something and several layers of trustees would be more applicable in this case.

It isn't that much different from adding a beneficiary for your online brokerage account.

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#78

Post by [deleted] »

bewuethr wrote: post #32
memco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is introducing a mechanism to allow access to certain data after passing: https://www.cultofmac.com/744814/apple-digital-legacy/ . It would be great to see more tools and services provide ways to pass on digital information so we don’t have too many haunted digital graveyards not too much digital treasure lying in waste.

GitHub does that, too: you can designate a "successor". https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-yo...

[deleted]

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#79

Post by gurchik »

dheera wrote: post #24
memco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is introducing a mechanism to allow access to certain data after passing: https://www.cultofmac.com/744814/apple-digital-legacy/ . It would be great to see more tools and services provide ways to pass on digital information so we don’t have too many haunted digital graveyards not too much digital treasure lying in waste.

As much as I hope nothing happens to me, I've always thought about writing a "dead man switch" piece of code that sends all my keys and passwords to a couple of trusted people if multiple signals all suggest that the unfortunate has happened. For example, all of the following must be true: * Zero Github commits in a week * Zero Facebook or Instagram posts in a week * Zero e-mail outbox messages in a week * Zero smart…

I've thought about dead man's switches as well, but with two differences:

One, I think a week is too short, as another person has already said. I'm planning a week vacation soon and want to be unplugged the entire time. Also, while rare, I can imagine a natural disaster could last longer than a week and the last thing I want to worry about is making sure I send a few emails.

Second, I'm curious why you want so many conditions to be true before the trigger? I've seen services (and I've thought of setting up a simple self-hosted option) that simply email you a link on a predefined cadence and all you have to do is click the link. In order to protect against some weird spam filtering, I'm thinking a text message or Discord message could also be sent. The odds of both breaking for a month I think is rare. Why might I also want Github commits and phone calls to be checked?

Re: One of the largest owners of Bitcoin, reportedly held over 1B dead at 41

#80

Post by timmg »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #47
wmf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a crypto billionaire, so either he was murdered by the G7 or he faked his own death.

blistering take wow https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=muerto%20playa%20hermo... not like people dont just die at this beach all the time after not heeding warnings. i live like a few hours from here it's really sadly common. especially considering its literally called 'beautiful beach'

Sounds like the perfect place to fake your own death ;)
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