There’s one guarantee in life, and that’s death. Sounds morbid to be talking about death and crypto, it but it’s a topic that is dear to me. If you love your family as much as you love your crypto, please be prepared for the end because it’s going to happen – guaranteed. We don’t know when, where or why of our eventual demise, but when you have assets on a living ledger and your family can’t access them, all of your hard work and investment strategy will die with you…unless you prepare now.
When banking heir and crypto billionaire, Matthew Mellon died suddenly in April 2018 at the age of 54, his crypto wallet with an estimated $500 million in XRP was lost forever because he didn’t leave his private key with anyone.
In December 2018, Gerry Cotten, founder of the crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, died with reportedly $137 million in BTC.
Search any of the major crypto blockchains and you will discover thousands of addresses that have no recent transaction history. We can presume that the owners have either died or lost their keys without proper backups. Depending how the markets are swinging, that could be billions of dollars worth of crypto lying dormant in inaccessible wallets. It’s proof that security measures work, perhaps at the detriment of one’s financial legacy and family’s inheritance.
With well over 800 million XRP out of circulation upon Mellon’s death, this has surely impacted not only supply but market cap projections. As crypto owners and facilitators, we have to take individual responsibility and make a legacy plan for our crypto assets.
I have personally printed all the brain keys, ridiculously long passwords, backup codes for all of my authenticators, and left explicit directions for the event of my death. I’ve even gone a step further and acquired names and phone numbers of a couple of trusted crypto friends that my family can call so they can be walked through the process of gaining access to my accounts. Everything is saved on flash drives and put in a fire proof and waterproof safe. That’s right, I’ve got print outs and flash drives as built-in redundancies because it seems irresponsible to do otherwise, for my family and for the blockchains that I love and support.
Take the time to make a legacy plan for your family because your day will come too. That’s a promise.
