Bitkey’s inheritance feature is the best way to ensure your loved ones get your coins when you’re gone.
For most legacy financial instruments–your stocks, IRA, 401k, even your bank account–there’s a pretty clear process for getting what’s yours to your loved ones when you pass away: you name them as a beneficiary and they get your stuff, give or take a couple legal hurdles in some cases.
Bitcoin doesn’t work like that. Or at least it hasn’t before now. Passing to your friends and family the legal right to your coins in your will is one thing, but making sure they actually get your coins is entirely another.
Hold your keys on any major exchange and there’s no way to name a beneficiary. Each exchange has its own policy–some involve formal appeals, some require a large amount of documentation, some ask that you record your account number somewhere in your will–and the process can take as long as a year in some cases.
Self-custody your keys in most hardware wallets or on paper or steel, and you have few options beyond pricey third-party services or leaving detailed access instructions–instructions that, in the wrong hands, could be used to steal your coins while you’re alive.
Bitkey’s inheritance feature addresses this for bitcoin, letting you name a beneficiary for your coins without the risk of sharing PINs or seed phrases while you’re alive–and without the need for your loved ones to spend months of back-and-forth with an exchange.
How inheritance works
At its most basic, inheritance is a companion to traditional estate planning, giving you a secure, simple way to pass on your bitcoin. (Always consult an estate planning professional for additional local and/or federal requirements.)
When you name a beneficiary, inheritance 1) encrypts your spending mobile key with a wrapping key and 2) encrypts that wrapping key with your beneficiary's public key. Both encrypted keys are uploaded to Block servers for use in the event of your passing. It’s a bit like putting your wrapped mobile key in a safety deposit box that only your beneficiary has a key to unlock. At no point do we have access to your unencrypted mobile key–and at no point does your beneficiary, before the inheritance and 6 month “Delay and Notify” period is complete.
When you pass away, your beneficiary can trigger the inheritance process through their Bitkey app. Doing so will trigger a 6-month security period, during which you will receive periodic messages to alert you of an inheritance claim–a built-in safeguard that helps protect you in the event that a claim is made while you’re still alive. At any point during those 6 months, you or your beneficiary can stop the inheritance process.
After the 6-month inheritance Delay and Notify period expires, Bitkey relays both the encrypted wrapping key and encrypted mobile key to your beneficiary. The beneficiary’s Bitkey app then uses their private key to decrypt the wrapping key, and the wrapping key to decrypt the mobile key. Your beneficiary can then co-sign a transaction with the key on Bitkey’s servers and transfer funds to their own Bitkey. At no point before this will your beneficiary see your bitcoin balance or access your funds.
Making Bitcoin inheritance easy
Making bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose has been part of Bitkey’s offer since we started. With inheritance, we’ve brought that same ethos to life in a way that lets you and your loved ones bypass what we see as unnecessary complexity in passing on your bitcoin.
