Driven by digitalization impact, most people hold an equal amount of digital assets compared to physical assets. With advancements like cryptocurrency, bitcoin, digital currency, digital wallets, and digital financial assets, the management of digital assets has become crucial.
As people are very careful about their online lives and to secure digital assets, people have many different usernames and passwords for their digital assets. Compared to gains a digital estate plan can bring, the damage or losses of not having is much higher. Failing to mention guidelines on what to be done with the digital assets not only results in chaos to custodians and family members but also can result in severe losses, as the details can be lost along with the dead user.
Misplaced Identity
The dependents or the custodian must have the digital estate planning document or last will briefing all your digital asset information, to ensure that it won’t get into the wrong hands. So, that the government officials can update all public domain databases regarding the death of a person. In doing so, officials can make sure that offenders use the dead person’s identity to commit any crimes or misuse the identity for their gains.
Special Moments Lost Forever
Life is all about an assortment of great moments, which can be our own experiences or a great time with friends or dear ones. These moments can be an excellent thing for loved ones to cherish, whether we are with them or not. The moments can be photographs, letters, emails, autograph albums, videos, and so on, which is stored digitally in the form of blogs, social media feeds, digital diaries, and so on. Not notifying the family about where the data assets are stored can leave this data lost forever, which may leave your family distressed as they can’t revisit and cherish the great moments.
Lost Commercial Domain Names
Do you hold a domain name? If so, there are more chances of you being a millionaire! Wondering how? GoDaddy states that the Cars.com domain cost estimated to be $872 million. This is estimated to be the most expensive domain that was sold out. Apart from this CarInsurance.com sold for $49.7 million, Insurance.com for $35.6 million, PrivateJet.com for $30.18 million, and Voice.com for $30 million.
Now, say user holds one such domain with market value and say it failed to mention this in the last will or digital estate plan. Any domain failing to renew will be lost over a time of period and who will not ready to grab such domains. So, failing to mention this data in a digital estate plan can disable you to provide huge financial value to your dependents or family members.
Exposing of Undesirable Secrets
How much ever close we maybe our family or loved ones, most of the individuals do have some private space, which they may not be willing to disclose or share with anyone for whatsoever reason it may be. The private space may include things, heart-breaking secrets, documents, messages, emails, and so on.
If the user’s profession is a doctor, lawyer, or secret services, then the user is most unlikely to be comprising some confidential information, which is not to be shared with family members or dependents. Without entitling legally authorized or inappropriate people (even though it is your family member), getting access to this data can be embarrassing. It may also be misused, leaving a bad reputation to you or bring additional problems to your dependents.
Missing Out Virtual Property or investments Can Be Tragic
Like physical properties, in digital empowered age (where bitcoin and cryptocurrency are catching the boom), acquiring virtual or digital property has become the most common thing. Also, today, we see selling and purchasing is happening through bitcoin. In this age, missing out on the list can be tragic to your dependents, as they hardly know that you have acquired.
Let us understand this from a real-time incident that happened recently in Canada, where the unexpected death of Mr. Gerald Cotton- CEO of Quadriga Fintech Solutions– lead to fatal losses approximated to $200 million, as he hasn’t shared with anyone about his company’s cryptocurrency and bitcoin passwords and recovery keys prior to his demise. This pushed all the customers’ investments into trouble. Even now, federal agencies are still probing into this issue. This sort of incident can be disastrous to your dependents or family members.
