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'"Can you inherit Bitcoin"'

A smart contract holds crypto and bequeaths it to listed beneficiary(s) in the form of a smart contract. The smart contract is immutable and is capable of auto-executing a dead man switch. For instance,

• funds are deposited to the contract
• the owner (testator) registers beneficiaries with share amounts
• the owner must periodically call the heartbeat() function to indicate they are "alive"
• if the owner becomes inactive for heartbeatTimeout (month), executeWill() is activated, calculates each beneficiary’s payout and enables beneficiaries to withdraw their inheritance.

Most people do not require a dead man switch, rather in combination with a real world last will and testament that instructs the distribution of crypto and assigns public and private keys to each listed beneficiary. The last will and testament could execute,

• upon passing, where a real world executor or lawyer instructs beneficiaries.
• timelock, the beneficiaries receive after a period of time, 21st birthday etc. (as a Unix timestamp)
• trust fund, beneficiaries, are paid out each year over a number of years.
• equity locked, only reflections or a dividend is paid out monthly. Optionally, the equity is unlocked after a period of time or remains locked and unlocked via DeFi.
• custom arrangement, if it can be coded.

Notes: the drawback is, crypto is typically not regarded as stable. Conversely, Bitcoin has generally outperformed other financial investments and this is in conjunction with a typical will as the wallet keys should be held in trust by the legal firm or in the will, so they are not lost.