William GibsonVerified account

@GreatDismal None of that matter. Plotpoint is this: they die without telling anybody their password to their encrypted wallet.

@ErrataRob Say a Wintermute AI needs money, uses AI "powers" to find the wallet, then the password?

@GreatDismal Wintermute would then have to "crack" the password through raw numeric computation.

@GreatDismal If they chose "9p8agsdfiuu8hibu678oyugl" as the password, Wintermute would not be able to crack it.

@GreatDismal Even computers 100 years from now growing at Moore's Law rates, would still not be able to crack it.

@GreatDismal ...so plotwise, the number of coins Wintermute could crack would depend upon the choices of the deceased

@ErrataRob Thanks! Not a good plotpoint!

@GreatDismal if you had to, you could make it into one, such as the lawyer having a copy of the wallet in escrow

@GreatDismal what if this is what has actually happened to Satoshi, he died without revealing himself. Or, he lost the password, embarrassed

@GreatDismal @marciahofmann better plot point 20 years after Dad's death son rummages through papers finds bitcoin passwords, suddenly rich

@GreatDismal They clutter up the blockchain/ledger, until the protocol agrees to a change to drop dormant BTC after X time. 100 years?

@GreatDismal The private keys were generated with a weak prng, right? :-)