Have you ever asked yourself that question?
Should that day come, you'll know that all your real life assets, house, car, jewellery, best silver, valuable collections, bank accounts etc will be dealt with according to the local law and passed on to the right person. What about your crypto assets? Your Hive account, Hive Engine, Splinterland? All your other wallets and exchange? There is no law or regulation in the crypto world regarding assets of the dead.
In fact does anyone in your family even know about your crypto assets? Do they know what you're up to when you're in front of the screen all the time every day? Sure, they may know you're blogging or gaming, but do they actually know about all the rewards you get out of it? My husband knows I'm on Hive as he actually found out and told me about it four years ago. He knows I'm heavily involved in Pinmapple and I told him about the shit sun saga last year. But I'm guessing he just nods to everything I tell him as he normally does, and what goes in one ear goes out the other. Every now and then I update him on the value of my Hive wallet when there's a big movement in the Hive price, that, he takes more interest in.
If get run over by the bus today I'm pretty sure my husband would have little idea on how to access my Hive account. Undelegate first, wait five days, power down then wait thirteen weeks. No way he'd know about that. How does he convert the assets to fiat and move them to our bank account? Shifting Hive Engine funds out is even a bit of a challenge for myself, let alone him. Then he'll have to find all the various wallets and exchanges I've opened over the years because I had no idea what I was doing. On top of all this, he'll need my keys to access all these accounts.
So I've been thinking, what can I do to help my husband access my crypto assets if I die.
The easiest thing to do is to sit my husband down and go through everything with him. But remember I said what goes in one ear comes out of the other for him? Plus, it's unfair to expect him to remember this in the long run when he doesn't use these dapps and exchanges.
Alternatively, I could write everything down with clear instructions so any computer literate person, which my husband is, can follow. The problem is this becomes a double edge sword. If someone gets hold of this, I can kiss goodbye to my funds immediately.
A modification to the above, is to tear up the piece of paper to say ten pieces and stash them away at different places. As extra security, I'll give a few pieces to a close relative to keep at a different location. My husband will know the location of all the pieces, but not if someone broke into my home. Plus they will never have the complete puzzle. And my funds will be safe from theft. Not a bad idea actually but a little fiddly to keep track of.
The last method I thought of, is to find someone on Hive who can help him, a bit like setting your recovery account to a trusted person. I have one or two names in mind whom I can trust 100% in case my husband decides to give him or her all the keys to do all the transactions. I write down my keys in a little cryptic way which if you're a Hiver or cyrpto savvy person could decipher, but probably not the man on the street. Ideally my husband will know this person, or at least know of him or her. I've mentioned some people on Hive before when I tell him about the online gossip and happenings. Given an Hiver is more crypto savvy than my husband, perhaps this may be a viable and easier option.
How do you plan for these circumstances? I'm interested to hear what everyone else does as it's never too early to plan for these sort of things.