Author: Pix & Translation: Saoirse, Foresight News
People in the cryptocurrency world often say, "If it's not your key, it's not your coin." This sounds powerful, and it's often true. But there's a hidden mirror logic behind this statement—"Only your key owns your cryptocurrency."

If no one else knows how to access your wallet, then the moment you stop breathing, your cryptocurrency is essentially "no longer existing." Of course, this isn't a literal disappearance—it still exists in the blockchain ledger, but from an economic perspective, it's no different from being burned.
... So how large is this "dead buyer" phenomenon? Today, most cryptocurrency holders are young, with the majority between their late twenties and early forties. Very few holders are past retirement age, making the issue of "cryptocurrency outflow due to death" easily overlooked. Even so, the relevant data is still staggering: Approximately 60 million people die globally each year (based on a global population of approximately 8 billion); there are approximately 500 million cryptocurrency holders worldwide (equivalent to 1 in 16 people holding cryptocurrency); because cryptocurrency holders are younger than the global average population, their mortality rate is also lower, conservatively estimated at approximately 0.2% annually; based on this calculation, approximately 1 million (500 million × 0.2%) of these 500 million holders will die each year. Currently, most cryptocurrencies are still held by individuals, and holders rarely make estate plans for them. Even if only 10% of the wallets of deceased individuals remain inaccessible due to a lack of known access methods, approximately 100,000 wallets would become invalid each year. Conservatively assuming an average balance of only $20,000 on average, this amounts to about $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency exiting circulation annually. And this number will continue to grow over time—after all, the younger generation will age. This leaves us with a crucial question: since the advantage of personal cryptocurrency custody lies in eliminating intermediaries, how can we prevent the reintroduction of intermediaries when passing on these assets?
Passing on assets that weren't originally designed to be "transferable"

Most current solutions fall into two extremes: either simple but fragile, like storing mnemonic phrases in a bank safe deposit box (easily lost and stolen); or secure but so complex that no one wants to actually use it. Neither of these solutions is satisfactory, so I adopted a compromise—a simple three-step transfer method that is easy to remember, difficult to crack, accessible anytime, anywhere, and guarantees 100% non-custodial (i.e., no reliance on intermediaries).
The specific steps are as follows: Step 1: Build your own single-page website. Create a single-page website using a "niche domain" consisting of 3-4 words—domains that ordinary people wouldn't easily type into a search bar, but which should have special meaning for you and be easy to remember. Also, prepay for website hosting fees for at least 10 years and set up automatic renewal to ensure the website remains accessible in the long term. Step 2: Convert your mnemonic phrase into a numeric string. First, choose a book you like, find its most common publisher, and buy 10 copies (ensuring that the page numbers and layout of each book are completely identical). Then, convert your cryptocurrency wallet mnemonic phrase into a numeric string one by one: for each word in the mnemonic phrase, find its position in the book and record "page number - line number - word position in that line". For example, "112, 3, 5" represents "the 5th word in the 3rd line of page 112". Convert all mnemonic phrases into numeric strings using this method.
Step 3: Upload the numeric strings to your dedicated website
Simply publish the converted numeric strings as a list on your dedicated website, in the following format:

By the way, this is a real numeric string corresponding to a mnemonic phrase, linked to $500 in cryptocurrency. However, the website domain is fictitious; the real mnemonic phrase is hidden in a book.
... Just one hint: I absolutely love detective novels, so happy treasure hunt everyone! I know this might sound like overkill, and some might think it's unnecessary, but this method does make asset transfer more flexible while ensuring security. You can further enhance security, such as using rare books or self-printed copies to store the location information corresponding to the mnemonic phrase; of course, you can also go to less trouble—simply place a hardware wallet (Ledger) and a metal plate engraved with the mnemonic phrase in a safe. Otherwise, your cryptocurrency may ultimately only be "donated" to the blockchain (i.e., permanently untradeable).