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$140 Billion in Bitcoin Is Gone Forever. Is Yours Next?
My loved ones4 min read·Just now--
The great strength of Bitcoin is its anonymity and independence from banks and governments: no one except you knows about your digital assets. But that same feature makes it vulnerable when it comes to inheritance.
By some estimates, more than $140 billion worth of Bitcoin has been lost forever, not only because of market declines or theft, but also because of ordinary human carelessness: forgotten passwords, lost devices, suddenly dead laptops, and the owners themselves.
As the classic line goes, a person is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The real problem is that a person is sometimes suddenly mortal, and that is the key point. And that is where the most unpleasant part of cryptocurrencies and digital assets begins.
The problem is not that a person is unable to write down a seed phrase. Usually, people write things down on scraps of paper, in notebooks, and keep them in safes or hidden places.
But if, in the moment of sudden death, stroke, paralysis, or an injury that affects brain function, relatives are left behind and have no idea what exactly is in front of them — a few numbers, phrases, notes in old notebooks — they may easily take it for useless stationery and throw it away during a routine cleanup. A few numbers on a small yellow note do not look…
