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Comment by jespern | Hacker News Reader

That's like saying cryptography is faulty since if someone encrypted an important document and threw away the key, it would be irrecoverable. That's the point. As for solutions, there are many: use a multi-sig contract with several owners (like a spouse and/or lawyer), or simply leave the seed phrase to be released in your will. The proposed solutions that "may or may not work" are easy to test, I'm not really sure where you get your information.

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> That's like saying cryptography is faulty since if someone encrypted an important document and threw away the key, it would be irrecoverable.

No, it is like saying cryptography has important long term consequences. I don't even see any synonyms for "fault" in the post.

There are mechanisms if someone is careful about their estate planning, the issue is we have a great deal of evidence that most people don't do estate planning [0] and the courts have to clean up the mess.

Kkarakk is completely correct in saying that a (potentially non-technical) spouse or heir is being exposed to an exciting new way of losing large sums of money that they are entitled to. This is clearly a disadvantage of cryptocurrency, even if it is an intentional part of the design.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36325871

what happens when your fancy multi-sig contract is disputed by non-technical folk and the matter goes to court? court could easily throw all that shit out and say the crypto goes to your first wife instead. no guarantee that it will work at all.

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