What happens to my
bitcoins when i die?
It’s no surprise that in a digital age the question
of ‘what happens to my Bitcoins when I die?’
has been brought to our attention. Bitcoin is
cryptocurrency, which is a form of digital
currency, which of course means there’s
nothing tangible to be had. You can’t go to
the bank and withdraw X amount of Bitcoin
and you don’t keep it in your wallet. So where
exactly is it kept and how can you access it? private key to somebody, the contents of the
virtual wallet could be inaccessible. You could
still theoretically gift your Bitcoins to a family
member or a friend much in the same way
you would money from your bank account,
but the danger is that the private key to access
the wallet could simply be disregarded, or its
importance not understood by the executors
or beneficiaries.
Bitcoins are stored in a virtual wallet, and
this virtual wallet has two keys – a public
key and a private key. The public key is just
a string of characters and is visible to anyone
as an address for sending and receiving
cryptocurrency, whereas the private key is
what allows the owner to access the wallet’s
contents. This means that if you as the owner
were to die without leaving the details of your The real difficulty is in how you leave your
private key behind, and making sure you give
clear instructions to the person who you wish to
have access to your wallet. You could scribble
it down on a piece of paper for safe keeping,
but there’s absolutely no guarantee that this
will be accessible in the future. You could store
it on a memory stick, or somewhere on your
computer, but again, you’ll need to ensure
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The Society of Will Writers