One of the key problems for owners of cryptocurrency and their heirs is the inability to gain access to their digital assets for technical (lost codes) or physiological reasons (the death of the owner). According to estimates by the New York Times, crypto wallets containing more than USD 140 billion in assets were blocked for these reasons as of the beginning of 2021. When a businessperson working in cryptocurrency markets dies suddenly, it is often not only their loved ones who suffer but also their clients. The best-known case is the death in 2018 of Gerald Cotten, the founder of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Canada, Quadriga CX; as a result, 115 thousand clients lost access to their funds.
Renaissance Life (https://www.renlife.ru/) has signed a cooperation agreement with the founder of the decentralized financial project Independent Decentralized Finance SmartBank & Ecosystem (InDeFi SmartBank, https://indefibank.com/), the well-known Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev. The InDeFi SmartBank project envisages developing and rolling out a service that will confirm a client’s death and use that information to launch a mechanism for the inheritance of digital rights and assets.
According to the parties to the agreement, InDeFi SmartBank will take responsibility for developing smart contracts and launching inheritance procedures. This will enable clients, in the event of their death, to transfer their digital assets to the beneficiaries specified by them. Renaissance Life, in turn, will be responsible for confirming the client’s death.
This unique collaboration between an insurance company, which has an excellent reputation and enjoys the trust of its customers, and a leading Russian project in the DeFi technologies sector should solve one of the main problems facing the crypto industry today. At least 500 thousand people are expected to use this service in the coming year.
