Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Securing your Bitcoins against death, amnesia, prison etc.
by
casascius
on 02/10/2011, 00:10:55 UTC
Here is a "for dummies" product I plan to introduce soon.

I am working on a non-denominated gold-plated bearer bar that looks expensive but isn't.  On it is a hologram with embedded private key.  The bar comes with 0 BTC and the hologram explicitly says "zero BTC" on it.  But there's an address on it and a space where you can put (engrave, or sticker) your own denomination.

Someone who wants to save BTC can send their BTC to the bar and stick it in their safe.

The whole point of the bar is that it looks valuable.  Someone's heirs will treat it as such, and will probably store it or look for a way to sell it to somebody, exactly as if it were gold.  On the other hand, a flash drive in an envelope with a bunch of instructions about "TrueCrypt" and "PGP" will, in my opinion, probably get disregarded as not worth the trouble by most non-technical people (your mileage may vary - everyone's family is different).

On the other hand, while you are still alive, it's cool and novel to have a safe full of bitcoins - that looks like a safe full of gold bullion.