Alex Simeonides | Founder and CEO | Capital Legacy | mail me |
Whether it’s Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin or Monero, your cryptocurrency fortune could be lost forever if you pass away without giving your beneficiaries the private ‘keys’ to your digital assets.
You can’t simply write down the access codes to your crypto-accounts in your Will, since this leaves them open to being stolen, but you do need to plan properly to ensure your virtual coins aren’t permanently lost in the cloud.
Secure your personal keys
Private ‘keys’ are the only way to access your cryptocurrency virtual ‘wallet’. Think of them like bank pins made up of a long string of letters and numbers that are deliberately difficult to remember.
Most people store their personal keys on their desktop, mobile, in the cloud or on a physical device, such as a flash drive. At the extreme, investors may keep their codes on a paper – literally printing out the codes on a piece of paper and storing it somewhere they think is safe. But if your personal key is lost or you don’t tell anyone where your cryptocurrencies are kept, your virtual coins could be lost forever.
You need to let your loved ones know where you have stored the private keys and how to access them. You might consider, for example, putting them on a flash disk in a safe at home and explaining that in your Will.
Physical copies, however can be destroyed, misplaced or even accidentally thrown away, as this person learnt the hard way, consider backing up the information elsewhere too. Also keep a record of all your logins, passwords and two-step authentication process, so your beneficiaries can access your crypto-accounts once you’re no longer around.
Accessing your crypto through an online exchange
Online exchanges offer investors a way to …
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Read the full article by Alex Simeonides, Founder and CEO, Capital Legacy, as well as a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the April/May 2020 edition of BusinessBrief.
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