If you own Bitcoin, it might be wise to plan and think about where to store your information about it – just like all our passwords and other sensitive information.
Our valuables used to refer to our possessions but now it also includes: information!
No matter how young we are, we need to plan for the possibility of not being here tomorrow. How would that affect our spouse, kids and other family and even those we work with.
Do we have life insurance that would allow our loved ones to live in the manner we would hope they could?
Would they have immediate and easy access to our bank accounts and other financial assets in order to keep fund their livelihood?
Is my will updated so that my estate does not go into probate?
Where are my passwords for my digital profiles – Facebook, online Photos, credit cards and other intangibles that might be of value to those left behind?
Do I have a Trust – should I have one?
Bloomberg news just reported on problems with inheriting Bitcoin.
Five years ago, Matthew Moody was killed during an observational flight when the two-seater plane he was in crashed flying over a canyon in Chico, California.
His father, Michael Moody, knew his 26-year-old son had been mining Bitcoins — today worth thousands of dollars each — but had no idea how many he had or how to find them. Michael Moody has spent the past three years seeking the answers.
“My son was actually one of the earliest people to mine it,” said Moody, a retired software engineer. “He used his computer at home to mine Bitcoins when you actually could do it that way and he had a few we think.”
The decentralized and unregulated nature of Bitcoin means that without the keys to access his son’s digital wallet, hosted by blockchain.info, Moody has no way of accessing any funds. And it’s almost impossible to find out whether a person is sitting on peanuts or a fortune, as wallets can contain an unlimited number of unique addresses, or identifiers, with Bitcoins assigned to each. Without knowing every address, it’s not possible to locate every piece of currency.
Blockchain.info did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
To see the whole story click HERE
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