Pretty straightforward design. The beneficiary has their own Bitkey which is used to store a private key that can decrypt one of the benefactor's wallet private keys that's encrypted and stored on Bitkey's servers. The encrypted private key is revealed to the beneficiary in the event that the benefactor becomes unavailable for six months starting after the beneficiary initiates the inheritance. I think I got that right.
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338 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 28 Mar
What I always wished for is a different scheme or maybe a protocol:
- in my wallet I provide inheritance_address_A for my next of kin, inheritance_address_B for another person and then inheritance_address_SERVICE as a last resort
- if I don't check/use the wallet for 5 years, then all coins get automatically sent to inheritance_address_A of my next of kin
- if the next of kin doesn't check/use the wallet for 5 years, then the coins get sent to inheritance_address_B
- if the inheritance_address_B doesn't check/use wallet it is sent to inheritance_address_SERVICE
- this somehow contacts the public SERVICE (that I preselected) and that handles my estate and inheritance.
Ideally I'd be able to predefine this whole scheme ahead of time and every time I send/receive coins in my wallet it would always do this by default. It would be great if the receivers A and B don't know ahead of time how much bitcoin they will get and it would be great if the SERVICE can only unlock my "will" details at the point when they receive the coins in the end. It would be great if I can set up this scheme for anyone in my family and the wallets sort of default to this (i.e. when creating the wallet, every wallet should ask you about what's the backup address).
There could be a market of services (like SERVICE) that provide these inheritance capabilities, maybe I could send encrypted "will" to this service and they can only unlock it when they receive the coins 10 years from now - and then it would be great if the scheme verifies that the SERVICE is not stealing the money (some form of ZK proof maybe).
Overall I believe that this should be the default for all wallets - so no coins are ever lost again. In the worst case scenario / last point they get donated to some charity of your choice or marked as "anyone can spend" and they go to miners.
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82 sats \ 0 replies \ @Wizardsardine 27 Mar
Still trusting Bitkey to make the hand off so the beneficiary can access the funds.
What if Bitkey decides the beneficiary shouldn't get access to the funds?
Relative timelocks fix this.
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82 sats \ 2 replies \ @south_korea_ln 27 Mar
So they beneficiary needs their own Bitkey. That's a smart way to onboard more people and/or sell more devices. Even to people who might not use it for years until their benefactors die.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 27 Mar
I'd guess that's more like a happy coincidence than intentional. The beneficiary needs to hold key material for this to work and the ability to execute this protocol. This seems like both the easiest way to do that and it has these positive side effects.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 30 Mar
Makes sense. I also read they are working on allowing it to work for other wallets than Bitkeys, so indeed, might not be an evil ploy. But for now, it's what keeps me from activating the inheritance feature.
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24 sats \ 0 replies \ @j7hB75 27 Mar
What happens if Bitkey's servers or Bitkey itself cease to exist? What's the contingency there? Seems like a single point of failure in a way, but I guess we can all conjure up single points of failures for anything.
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 27 Mar
wasting money on useless toys
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @joseph_at_nostr_fan 28 Mar
Very cool!
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Satosora 27 Mar
its an interesting concept, but what happens if you just dont use the email for 6 months?
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 27 Mar
You give them multiple contact methods.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 27 Mar
Education is still the better way.
Educating your kids on how to use bitcoin.
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