bitcoin trading.
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Never mind dead and executor, a couple of years ago there was something on the TV news about some bloke who wanted to persuade the council to turn over a whole landfill site to find his thrown away PC, as the Bitcoins he previously didnt care or forgot about would now be worth a million or so.
Give it another year or two of these increases, he could be a billionaire, might be worth a bit of new landfill mining by then.0 -
bowlhead99 wrote: »The executor gives them to them. Unless the executor doesn't know where they are or what they are.
How? In most cases one would guess the owner wont have arranged secure storage of passwords.
In the new bitcoin world are we going to see the loss of currency down the cracks between sofa cushions on a massive scale? Sufficient in the longer term to seriously damage the system? I assume there is no way to identify which bitcoins have been lost and regenerate them?0 -
One doesn't really hold bitcoin in wallets, although that is the terminology we use, as it's something we are familiar with. Really the wallets hold a set of private keys which allow access to the blockchain where bitcoin are tracked.
So, these private keys can be stored anywhere. Password manager or printed out. I have mine printed out and stored in my safe deposit with other important papers. When I die (when, not if) then my executor will get the key to the safe deposit where they will find a bit of paper with the keys printed out then they can use that to get access to the bitcoin.
To anyone here planning on holding some bitcoin. Do not store them with an online exchange. Do not just have them in a desktop wallet without backup. The best is to use a hardware wallet (Ledger Nano S or Trezor) and have a printout of the keys.0 -
Another option is the implementation of smart contract features embedded in Etherium (as one example) which can be used to address succession planning as one of a great many other things, either by interoperability with bitcoin or in a future iteration of BTC itself where smart contract features are enabled.
This sounds like fun. If your Will says that you bequeath your estate to be distributed to your children but your Etherium has a "smart contract" embedded in it which causes it to pass to your nephew's account, then your nephew is going to have to hand over your Etherium to your executors. Whatever the "smart contract" may have said. If he refuses to hand it over then both he and your children are going to need some good solicitors.
Your nephew might argue that the smart contract constitutes a form of joint ownership, but it's not joint ownership if he didn't have any control over or rights to your Etherium before your death. Same applies if he tries to argue the "smart contract" constitutes a gift - if the Etherium was still yours to spend until you died then you didn't give it to him. The Etherium is the property of the estate and the Will decides how the property of the estate is distributed.
This illustrates how virtually all of the claimed benefits of cryptocurrency are solutions to a problem which doesn't exist. A "smart contract" which attempts to say what will happen to a cryptocurrency asset on the owner's death does not solve a problem, it creates one. The problem is there are now two conflicting instructions on what happens to the asset on the owner's death - the Will and the smart contract. (If they are not in conflict, then one is completely superfluous.) By law, the Will is the valid one and the smart contract does nothing except sow the seeds for an inheritance dispute.
It is the same position as if I have a Will which states that all my property goes to my wife but in my dying days I stick a Post-it Note on the grandfather clock which says "This is to go to my sister after my death. ~~~Malthusian." As it lacks witnesses it's invalid as a Will, and the clock will remain the property of my estate and become the property of my wife. If I actually wanted my sister to have the grandfather clock I needed to add a codicil to my Will and have it witnessed. Or give it to her in life.
A responsible person creates a clear and unambiguous Will which starts with the text "This Will revokes all previous Wills" to eliminate any potential confusion. If you are going to be a !!!! and go around leaving multiple documents which say different things, then if your beneficiaries are lucky one will be obviously invalid and the beneficiary of the invalid document will suffer distress. If they are unlucky, it will take the courts to decide which documents are valid, which can cost them an unlimited sum of money.0 -
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To anyone here planning on holding some bitcoin. Do not store them with an online exchange. Do not just have them in a desktop wallet without backup. The best is to use a hardware wallet (Ledger Nano S or Trezor) and have a printout of the keys.
so a hardware wallet is like a USB stick, which you keep safe? and also have a couple of copies printed and stashed at other locations, just in case the hardware wallet is lost/damaged?0 -
BananaRepublic wrote: »Ignoring the fact that by now it is probably under a housing estate, how long would a hard drive survive when exposed to damp, and various chemicals?
Assuming the hard drive is still inside a PC case then it will be reasonably well protected against direct contact with contaminants. The disk platters where the data is actually stored are inside a relatively well sealed container.
Assuming the drive is not actually submerged in water then my guess would be that the data would still be recoverable for several decades.
Modern landfill sites have measures to control pollution from leachate which include drainage of water to prevent damaging levels of pressure on the containment system. So if the landfill in question was well designed there is a fairly good chance that the PC is sitting in relatively dry conditions.
I believe at some point in future people will start commercially 'mining' landfill in order to recover valuable materials and energy. Modern materials recovery systems (used to process new domestic refuse before landfill or incineration) could enable bulk processing of historic landfill to extract metals, glass, plastics etc which are resistant to degradation. Lower grade material and organics would then go for energy recovery (incineration) to feed the plants which are currently fashionable, but might find their supply of waste drastically reduced in future.
So perhaps this 'billion pound' hard drive will one day be turned into a fizzy drink can
"In the future, everyone will be rich for 15 minutes"0 -
Assuming the hard drive is still inside a PC case then it will be reasonably well protected against direct contact with contaminants. The disk platters where the data is actually stored are inside a relatively well sealed container.
... So if the landfill in question was well designed there is a fairly good chance that the PC is sitting in relatively dry conditions.
Except that when it rains, the moisture will seep down, and the electronics will get wet. Is the platter housing waterproof? The platter might survive a while, but to recover the data you'd have to open it up and rehouse the internal disk. There are companies that can do that, not an easy job, but if the bitcoins are worth millions ... or pennies ...0 -
Sounds like Pokemon cards for adults.
Fresh air investment.
It wont end well.I do Contracts, all day every day.0 -
Profound insight, in-depth analysis showing detailed understanding of the underlying principles, revealatory conclusion. Well done.:rotfl:Marktheshark wrote: »Sounds like Pokemon cards for adults.
Fresh air investment.
It wont end well.
Or perhaps a bit of bandwagon jumping in with the vested old money interests that are scared of a fundamental shift in financial markets to a new paradigm?
For reference, I have paid >100 times as much for my holdings in traditional shares and funds as I have for BTC, so I'm not "talking up" anything here. Cryptocurrencies are innovative but have a number of problems that haven't been touched on here or in other topics on this board, and I feel there is little point in engaging in any discussion about them with some of the attitudes on display. Perhaps if they were moved out of the main "savings and investments" forum into a sub-board, only those genuinely interested would take part?Proud member of the wokerati, though I don't eat tofu.Home is where my books are.Solar PV 5.2kWp system, SE facing, >1% shading, installed March 2019.Mortgage free July 20230
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