Dying Is a B****: How to Beat the Grim Reaper With Your Digital Asset Organizers | Jacqueline Cooper

[Music] hi everyone um my name is Jackie Cooper I'm with the blockchain legal Institute and we want to welcome you to the stage because we have a very special panel today the topic is death as a and how to beat the Grim Reaper with your digital assets so this is something that everyone who owns any digital asset needs to be thinking about and I'm going to have my panel members introduce themselves first and then we'll round back to me so Laura hi I'm Elie Laura Cole I'm with industrial business lawyers we are a boutique blockchain Law Firm we help developers Builders startups anyone in the space that's touching on blockchain we do onshoring offshoring tokenomics token memorandums if you want to get listed we basically are a full service firm for anyone in the distributed Ledger technology space and um I'm happy to be here today thanks for having me Amber how are you doing I am great thanks for having me on the panel I'm Amber Welch I am the co-founder and CEO of fen Suite we are a full fractional Services Consulting uh offering Financial Services operational Services digital marketing Services fundraising and product strategy so we really cover the entire ecosystem of what startups and web 3 need um I've been in fintech for about 20 plus years and came to the area with both a compsite degree and an accounting Finance degree and then most recently we decided to launch a product called Navi AI the idea being that we would be able to alleviate the idea that Founders don't know what they don't know um what working really closely with the bli obviously in order to ensure that the access to knowledge around risk compliance and regulation from a financial perspective is easily accessible at all stages and Matt hello happy to be here yep um here at eth Denver definitely a pleasure happy to see people in the audience happy to be with these amazing panelists and I'm also a builder so we're here not only to talk about the issues but also to build uh technology that addresses the issues uh Jackie and I occasionally talk about what kind of applications would be needed for people in our industry that are you know facing uh like the next chapter of of life or life Hereafter and it's a subject that isn't talked about much so we're happy to like give it a voice here today so the blockchain leg legal Institute is a centralized library of resources and one of the things that have uh has been asked of us often is what happens with your digital assets so that's why this panel is really really important so we are going to be as I'm doing the various slides here I might hand it over to my partner here there we go nope the other way oh there we go this is our panel overview we are going to be looking at a variety of things in terms of understanding what digital assets are the legal considerations do you have is it outlined in your will um what about digital executiv and what are they who are they and who should they be do you have a digital organizer and access and security so um statistics what do you guys know about digital assets Wills who needs some you all this is a multi-disciplinary panel and the reason why we're doing this is because from the finance side to the building side to the law side there's a lot of members that need to be on your team so from your own personal experiences with knowing your clients what have you found that they need to know or should be aware of I think having a plan or a document addressing a lot of what happens if scenarios is the most important part because when you're starting a company or when you build a project in the beginning everything's great and then you know friction happens and when that friction happens that's really when it's most important that you did the work early and have something in writing to address what happens when things aren't going as planned my biggest thing right now the the clients that I work with the most right now are clients that are breaking up and it's not pretty and you've got to figure out who gets what tokens who who gets what fin um early financing back who gets the IP moving forward who owns what assets digital and physical sometimes um so having an a document to address that early when things are going really well is so much easier than when you're calling me saying Help like this is going so poorly Amber I know that you're in the finance side what have you found in terms of what your clients seem to need well I definitely back up everything that LC is saying um I think what a lot of people fail to realize is you need to be thinking about business continuity from day one nobody should be thinking detailed exit plan on day one but it goes back to the old adage you plan for the worst and you hope for the best and and it's not always a bad situation we frequently see companies whose co-founders decide to exit and move to a new project for whatever reason and new help new CEOs new SE suite are stepping into those roles and that's where that knowledge becomes extra important for sure I know Matt you're a builder so what do you think the build Builders need to know from a digital asset will perspective I think one thing that's important to note about the builders is especially through things like the ethereum community the builders have been enriched um over the last you know five years or more as Builders go to competitions number one they get investors they get venture capital in uh traditionally this is has been in things like digital assets even so founder might raise money or resources or a treasury in something like Bitcoin so number one they're already dealing with something that's uh you know that's a little bit different and number two the builders are the ones that like I said may have already been enriched because they've been in the program for a while they've been in the industry for a while and they've received bounties and investment of different kinds maybe they've had exits maybe they've successfully uh appropriated lots of tokens because they built a really great platform so it probably affects Builders as much as anyone um um there may be as many Builder well let's there's not as many Builders but there may be a proportionally Builders with a lot of assets whereas a casual investor at this time or in a bare Market or maybe even a casual investor might have bought something that's possibly worthless today whereas Builders have been around for a while probably have a lot of substantial like assets of value that are marked high in a market and those Builders are also maybe distracted or they're busy building and they don't take the time to think about this so I just say yeah Builders definitely take a look at like overall what assets are around and who do you want to hold those if something happens to you you bring up a all of you bring up a really great point so the stats that are here 300 million people possibly own crypto and over 4.9 billion are internet users so all of those are digital assets but I have a feeling that if we were to pull the audience not that many individuals within the audience might actually have wills and if you are in the process of either either purchasing a digital asset or creating a digital asset and your families don't know how to access those digital assets or what you're creating then what you're doing is going to stay on chain and won't benefit those that you actually want to have benefit let's go to the next slide thank you so this is just a sample of the digital assets that any of us could have that we need to have considered in our will and for me I know I'm a writer so I have to think about ebook I know that we all have social media content there are databases but how many of us in our Wills actually take into account the airdrops that we get or the nfps or the domain names I can't tell you how many I own so what about for all of you guys what are there is there anything here that you think needs to really stand out when you are creating a will or need to put some information into that digital asset organizer that we're going to talk about later yeah I mean we we have to think about digital assets as more than just crypto because there's IP out there that covers more than just what's on chain and so in this information digital age of the internet where you're only spending more and more time on the internet you really need to think about how how it is you're engaging what you're engaging in what you actually own of that and do an assessment find a way to document what you can and address it accordingly because if something happens to you there might be real value in stuff that you've created or stuff that you own or engaged with maybe you're in a dow and you want like the Dow has rules on how that transfers if you pass away or maybe your Dow doesn't even address that there might be you know a lot of open questions in terms of digital assets that you you need to take the time to assess what you actually have and is it what you think you have because sometimes you might own an nft and you don't own what you think you own about it or you might be putting content out on a certain social media and it's not actually yours because you're using a website that has terms and service that take it from you the moment you publish it so you need to think about what it is you're doing how you're engaging with it and what's actually written or documented on their website and then what you would like to have happen as well yeah anyone else want to um share out otherwise we're going to go to right to the next slide we have a lot of information to share oh sorry that's okay so um Amber I know that you are dealing with multiple jurisdictions because the clients that you serve are not just here in the United States so what would you like to share with everyone about how to work cross borders and what to be aware of so this is a really important topic that's frequently overlooked and I know I keep saying that but it's a common theme with Founders and companies to prioritize product over some of the foundational pieces of creation and they get themselves into trouble so first recommendation is always seek out knowledgeable people what you're going to find nine times out of 10 is there are a lot of players more and more every day coming into the space saying they understand what all of us are doing those of us are building who have experience and have been around for a long time and they don't and and the unique aspect of these different jurisdictions is that you have to understand the underlying emerging technology to a certain extent to be able to know what kind of questions to ask of those service providers and then the other piece that I've seen frequently especially in the finance realm is very few Finance providers understand the idea of business continuity they don't understand not only the cross-jurisdictional piece but they definitely don't understand the different components that go into estate planning because it is more than Wills there are trusts and other and different types of trust especially in the digital asset component so being able to actually know that the people you're talking to are properly vetted um and then can initially review your situation to provide you a course forward and not just say hey sign this contract and pay me money is my biggest uh typical piece of advice that I give to anybody I speak with yeah I agree with you um next the next slide so first of all show of hands how many of you actually have Wills awesome but those that don't have Wills now raise your hand it's about 5050 so when you do have a will you still have have to look at these parts you have to really and this is this is difficult explicitly write down every digital asset you own you really have to do a brain drop and you have to specify how do you want this to be handled because I've had many conversations with individuals about whether the asset should be held or liquefied and if you're not around and you don't give those details or those instructions in the will then your executive or your family who might not know anything about these assets they might say well let's just sell it and it might not be the best time to sell so the other thing that we mentioned is how to access that and we're going to be talking about that as well as what should be done so I know that you know Matt Amber and Laura there are a lot of different pieces to this what what do you think is the most important of this laundry list that we have here I'm I think addressing the fact that you do have digital assets is the most important I mean who handles it and who's keeping track of it or who's got um the power to the Keys your attorney who writes your will might not want to be the The Keeper of the keys I know a lot of um Wills trust and Estates attorneys that seek out my help they don't want to be the custodian they don't want that burden that that stress of of trying to maintain that so now you need a document that's says what you have and then you need an and a a separate document or ability to get to that because you don't want to have them necessarily in the same document um depending on who the fiduciary of your estate is that's very true Matt what do you think for this laundry list because I know you own a number of digital assets where do you think what's important here I think people should evaluate like where where on your priority list of things to do is this okay so you can like rank it on a scale of 1 to 10 I'm pretty busy today you know have I updated my digital asset um you know repository and database no probably haven't but where you know first of all be thinking to yourself how high a priority is this for you if you have um you know children and heirs it's probably fair and a significant amount of crypto it's probably fairly high on your priority list um the and then if it is a higher higher in your priority list and you want to start like chiseling away at you're going to address it right and really what are all those digital assets because previously they might have been called things like intangibles right a bunch of things that were unknown or some value in a name or some Goodwill um the value of the Goodwill or entitlements that can all like there may be be a lot of future we all already know this a lot of future benefits sometimes to participating in these networks so your wallet may have received a certain amount of benefits and be it from an airdrop or you know some other participate some other way you participated and something and may there's a future benefit or entitlement those things would be uh thought through as well um but yeah I think it's you know how high do you prioritize it maybe first and then what does it really look like Jackie what should some what say someone's just all of a sudden the light's gone off the $20 million worth of bitcoin that they have is on a hard drive and you know they kept the the the the pass phrase somewhere else and they're thinking like well who do I need to give this to who's going to be who's going to be the executive or the trustee or what if I don't have someone like that in mind right now where do I start so I just want to ask you that question and maybe that's another slide but you know let's say the lights gone off here and someone wants to take action today what what would you tell them to do I would say secure your coins make sure um that you have it offline and online and if you're going to have a paper copy of it put it in a security box because sometimes the online gets lost and you still still need to have the paper access um but if I'm going to share this with someone okay I'm not I shouldn't email them these things no and who should I share with a parent uh well that's that's going to be part of the decisions that we're going to talk about yeah let's go on to the next slide okay let's be honest we're all hoping that someone's sharing 20 million in Bitcoin with each of us yeah sounds good but I've also heard stories of those those computers being thrown away because parents didn't know that the wallets were on them so there is that why we have to share with our parents or family the importance of keeping digital tools that might have digital assets on them so digital executive team just like you have more than one doctor that might be a specialist you might have to have more than one attorney or you might have to have a multi-disciplinary team because your attorney might not understand digital assets they might be a legacy attorney and might be really great but they might or your CPA but they might have no clue what to to do if you have to access a wallet so you know with this um laundry list family attorney CBA Banker website where do you think how do you make a decision as to who should actually be part of this process and what do you tell them what are what are your thoughts about that Laura I think that's a really personal question depending on what your network looks like but anytime you know you're hiring someone to do their job you're probably a little bit safer than um you know the friction that can happen with different interpersonal relationships so just ensure that you know you're comfortable with who you're working with you have to trust who you're working with this is your future this is your family's Legacy basically so whoever you work with you want to feel comfortable with you want to be able to trust you want to be able to you know have a price point that makes sense for you and your assets and your future and you want to ensure that that relationship has a fiduciary element to it so they have a duty to you to Ure sure that they you know do right by you and they um you know handle their matter with respect and in accordance with your W wishes Amber I actually was going to mention the fiduciary piece myself so I'm glad you brought that up um also for people who don't maybe have the funding right maybe all of these components don't apply to you because you are bootstrapping or you're an individual there's always a poor man's option I know like when Co hit and I was just starting out with my company and this seed of an idea and I started freaking out because of I was like wow this is really scary didn't think I would live through this in my lifetime I created a video now I didn't give away seed phrases and things that could like come back to bite me but I did express my ideas of what I wanted to occur with my estate uh we do have trust for our assets because we have both physical and digital in in our household and sometimes having something is better than having nothing so kind of going back off of what you said about prioritizing I think if you sit there and you look at your laundry list of to-dos and maybe it doesn't include the ability or the financial means to to cover all of these bases even taking some of the small steps to say I'm going to record a video and at least express my wishes surrounding them is a good place to start and then further saying hey I'm going to set up 10 or 15 minutes each day where I just tackle a couple of items on that list and add to it and eventually you'll have it complete and then it's just a matter of like rechecking it which is much faster I agree I also know that at in April or March um we might be preparing our taxes and that's a really good time when you're looking back over the course of the last year to tackle some of the um data accumulation that you need for your digital assets because because you're already looking back at what you're doing and so this is a time when it actually might be a little bit easier for you to take the mental space to actually write down certain things so that way the next year is a little bit easier for you or your family next slide I had I had a good thought here though I had a good thought okay so it's it seems a little overwhelming seems like a lot of homework it is and then the other thought I had is that so much of this is intertwined in business or with your startup friends or with your uh yeah with your business partners and so much of the eventual outcomes disputes if this then that or even something happens to them that affects you it just made me think how of that team I think the company should make it a priority right as in it's a company priority okay so it seems overwhelming right the CPA the attorney also when we're talking about it to me this is what I wanted to break it out into two things okay so who am I going to have really sorted out for me mostly me okay I'm going to have to list the assets right just like uh you know when you go to trial or uh you know you're get in trouble you you know your story better than everyone else your lawyer can't even help you unless you got your story straight in the facts this is very hard um so I just wanted to mention that like I looked at that slide about that team it looks like an overwhelming meeting uh it's like a long meeting but the most important thing is maybe to prep yourself right so breaking into some small steps here make a list you probably already have a list there's even books there's small booklets uh specifically for these purposes they give them out in conferences sometimes and of course that might need to be in a safe um maybe it's done with your own sort of Cipher and you've just made little annotated notes around what wallet was what and you are the only one that knows what it is at that's time so you don't feel like you're putting a bunch of you know information out there in the world in a in a single place that has so much effect on your life right so there's little ways I guess you could deal with it yourself first and then the other side of I thought was the accountant is probably a fairly import important person in the story and then where I started this point was how important probably the company or the organization that maybe made these assets or owes you more assets or has committed something um or you have entitlements in that organization uh the lawyer the lawyer very important it sounds like as I'm evaluating this team right so one I have to take the first steps number two the accountant should definitely be aware of a lot of things fam should be aware of a lot of things but a lot of the bigger ones right the Messier ones someone would you would want some professional help I guess that's that was what I wanted to say no I think that's important the other thing that I know as this space evolves the type of assets are changing too so now we have staking you know there's a lot of other things that maybe you know people weren't involved in a few years ago so it's really important as you are creating your list of assets to also think of the flowchart okay so this is the asset this is what I'm doing with it what do I want my person who I'm going to be sharing this with to do with it or not do with it so the reason why I have this book up here and and even though this book that I created for my daughter and if you do go to uh block chain legal Institute I'll send this to you for free but I created this and this is probably out of date now because I created this with just Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in mind but I'm doing so much more now so I need to update this because this is simply a crypto wallet organizer that's very easy for her to access because I have wallets on my phone while it's on the computer it's double authenticator there's this there's that she would have no way to know how to access any of the things that I've been growing for her so these are things that you know as we in the community if we're creating something these are tools that all of us need and so that's why you know as you create something share it out so again the this five minute wallet organizer it'll be free to all of you but I'm going to have to update it so do you guys know of any other wallet organizers that might be out there that are also tools because I traded this because I realized there wasn't one that I saw no I I mean like I think that's the only one I've seen yeah so but again if you guys hear of any let us know we'll list it on the library let's go to the next slide so access and security really important when your will becomes public it becomes public don't put your seed words or any of your information in there so again what from your knowledge of working in the legal area area as well as in the finance area and just in the building area who would you want to have access to this information and how would you recommend for people to to handle this very important step well if you can I would say find a lawyer who's willing to hold to be the custodian um but that'll you know maybe cost more um so then your secondary approach would be to maybe get a safe deposit box or a safe where you know uh your will references the safe and then the access to it is somewhere else it kind of you kind of create like a treasure hunt basically because you don't want any all of it in any one spot especially because a will becomes public when you know you've got to announce who gets what so you want to be very careful about navigating someone to what they need to know where it is um and that can be kind of tricky but that's something you can work with your lawyer on or um there's Creative Solutions out out there too and the legal lift doesn't have to be so scary it's not like you got to spend days or weeks or months figuring this out the legal lift can be swift it can be efficient and less costly than you think because anything is better than nothing at this point um it's just so important to address these things as as they come up now when you can versus at a later point when maybe you can't access your seed phrase or you you forgot where it's at or you had an accident and and no one can you know find out where this information is so it's better to address what you can today how you can and then touch base maybe annually as as your financial position changes or your assets change and you need to touch back in um but it's better to do what you can when you can and the legal lift is never as scary or as costly as you think I want to add to that medical power of attorney if it's not just you know if you pass pass away if you become incapacitated if something happens to you and you need access to these resources to help fund your medical care that's another reason why this is really important to to take make sure you include your family in the conversation of where this information is even if they don't have full access to it they need to know so that way they can support you in case you have a need um next slide all right Amber what about service provider policies what you know I know I don't always read my service provider policies even though I'm an attorney I click yes how how many of these policies do you happen to read to know what the terms and conditions are in case something happens to you and where those assets go the number of times I've had a conversation with staff or senior staff that are just starting out in finance for their faces to go dead white when they realize that no they're not lawyers but yes they need to be able to read through the legal Le and understand those terms I would have a lot of money if I if I put money on like all of those situations it is important yes if you're not a lawyer and I know I'm kind of surrounded by them now safe for you um that it can be overwhelming to sit there and and see like a 100 page document but the piece of advice I give is at at least learn to understand the basic terms of that how long do things last what are the definitions associated with it and your teams that are supporting your company or you as an individual they need to be able to read and understand those Pro provider policies and that is so important I'm going to hop in here because of a conversation that I've had this week with some others nfts and openc royalties so you know when you create something something you have certain expectations and then companies change those expectations in the terms and conditions so it's really important that as you create digital assets that you also keep up with whatever the terms and conditions are because that might impact what you're going to be giving to your heirs and if you don't know where the changes are then you also can't direct that in your will so next next slide Matt there is a list of various buckets here there's the personal bucket the financial bucket the business bucket what do you think where do you think people should kind of attack first in terms of putting information down um for their digital asset organizers and just in general I like what that was said uh what was said earlier that you have to start somewhere and something is better than nothing yeah okay so we definitely want to use this opportunity don't to not overwhelm people okay so I like this what's next right next steps um you know a lot of this is personal for people people are very you know you care about your Buffy corn some I know Jackie likes her Buffy corn in it's personal um people care about their uh their Punk and their bour or whatever else it may be um I don't want to talk about those projects necessarily but um I think that that something is better than nothing uh for sure for sure and the getting started is going to be important I would say take it personally uh number one and then definitely consider your business uh and going back to this third party policy something that a lot of people were probably affected by is exchanges or other uh custodians um for lack of a better word that have become insolvent or going through some restructuring or have been um let's say uh everything's been completely appropriated into boxes that you never knew existed by this custodian and you're getting back uh you know 10% or your erors are getting back 10% of what you and your financial team may have thought was appropriate or or thought was uh the situation in writing so Celsius is definitely one of those that's happened uh you know recently I'm sure there's efforts to recover funds um from a variety of thechanges going all the way back to Mont gaau so I think um there's a very valid point there about even what you think you may own you may not uh as as as it relates to those policies and then uh I wanted to mention with the getting started get started number two look for a good resource look for something structured look for something like what Jackie maybe has been presenting or some of the work that we may be doing with the standards Institute where we're standardizing some of these things so everyone understands what it is what it means um I think that those are going to be the next steps I think they'll be more clarity uh but going that back to these buckets I guess I just want to mention make it go ahead and make it personal and then as it relates to your company maybe shift the burden onto the onto the company operations people and see if they can help sort it out so Matt brings up a really good point if you don't tell your family where your assets are and something does happen to you then they also don't know what company to go to to claim those assets so that is another reason why whether it's a centralized exchange or a decentralized exchange your family needs to know where your assets are I think further to it's important that as a builder if you're the one in charge of code or you're building something for someone else you need to have a contingency plan for if something happens to you what happens to that client that client's code if they can't access it anymore I had a situation early on in my like blockchain career where an nft project was launched and the developer passed away and that the the owner of that nft collection didn't have access to the the wallet because of how the launch was connected to that wallet and it it was her whole livelihood I mean she went all in on this nft project so losing that overnight was terrifying for her and it took months of tracking down his family members and getting to his personal computer and paying this um you know professional company to kind of go through and unlock things for her whereas if they just had set a plan in their original agreement to say like here's this here's in your agreement with your client maybe like here's a backup password to your GitHub repository or this this set of code that you might need to unlock this project should something happen um so you might you want to think about that in the early stages when you're just accepting a project or or you're and you know hiring someone to do something for you you need to think about your access ACC to that code or your access to that repository or whatever it is they're building you need to have a back door to it because that's kind of what you're paying for too yeah very much so Amber yeah I did have something to add I knew you could see it in my eyes so a couple of things kind of building off of what both of you said lwh hanging fruit is a key piece here tackle it by getting the easiest stuff out of the way first and the things with the highest dollar value the things that are going to have the greatest impact tackle those first the other piece on shared access is vitally important um I work with clients all the time in showing them the importance of shared drives shared information because the second their CFO goes on maternity leave and suddenly all of the financials are inaccessible because if they had no clue it was all on her personal devices it's a story right and the same thing applies to digital assets and and any assets for that matter um so tackle the low hanging fruit and the high dollar values first you're going to get the most bang free your buck there I know all this takes time but if you can do it right from the start then it'll be a little bit easier than having to backtrack I know the pain right now of starting a CRM with all nine years worth of contacts it's a lot easier to start it from day one so in terms of like your digital asset if you buy a new digital asset write it down so just start with the new and then work backwards good okay so 8020 we often hear this 80% of of the people myself included don't do things we procrastinate 20% actually get on top that's why I put the the stat here so um how often do you think your your digital asset platforms get updated and how often do you think that you actually write down those updates whether it's your passwords or things like that anyone I'll start with this one so I see clients update terms and conditions on their marketplaces that they're running on various different products that they run regularly and most likely a lot of us are actively participating in things so I advise both my clients and the individuals I know you should be reviewing that anytime there's a material change or on a quarterly basis for any maybe slightly less material changes and updating things yeah anything I covered it let's keep going all right next slide all right so this sort of goes back to how do we create a will so who's in your family who do you want to have benefit maybe no one maybe a charity and then um what are the assets that you're actually looking at are they online are they in real life you know and then do you have a trust do you have is it in your safe box or is it on your phone the assets because again I have a lot of Wallets on my phone that are not on my computer and then depending upon your age you might think that you actually don't need a will but if you're under 17 and you're investing in digital assets or gaming or Bitcoin or anything like that you need a will you need uh your parents need access to that information in case something was to happen o obviously older we all have different life passages and there's going to be different needs and then where where is where is this information is it physical or is it online what what other at that's all right what other things would you like to add for that um no I think that that covers covers it okay next slide okay so again who's your executive we talked about this a little bit but it goes back to the the the five W's so who would like to talk about how do we decide who should be our executive for our digital assets well I think like I said earlier your digital asset executive might be different than your will executive so those might not be shared or they could be shared but that's something that you need to decide and I suggest you ensure that whoever you pick has a fiduciary duty to both the other thing is let's say that you ask a friend to be your digital executive you can have a contract with them so um and you also do multii there are a lot of different ways that you can protect the information Amber what other ideas do you have for digital executiv so I think like in this space we all talk about education a lot right like we talk about how is adoption going to occur because that looks different all over the globe and some places we've already seen it actively occurring just because of need exist there like in certain South American and other third world countries um and then other more developed regions we're talking about how adoption is going to to be feasible because of web 2 right like so my mom's a boomer she is going to adopt web 3 when it doesn't seem like web 3 not that she hasn't had a lot of conversations already but in the same way it all starts with education so the very first thing that I usually recommend to people is understand the basics most people don't start to think about these things when they're younger and they should um not only does life just happen like my father passed away extremely young and in my 20s I was helping my mom sort through not only all the medical bills of dealing with someone who had a terminal illness but then also what do you do with that because they thought they had decades still ahead of them so just start to understand the basics understand what is a will what is a trust there are multiple types of trusts and what goes into them who oversees them what's a fiduciary basic terminology that's easy and accessible and when you start to in the basic education it will be much less scary tackling the other components yeah Matt I know you and I have talked about um Creative Solutions in other parts of the world and in the UAE actually we just learned about a new creative solution do you want to share what some of the court systems are doing there sure although I'm not an expert yeah um the uh you know there's a lot of progressive ideas I guess that come out of the UAE and some of those regions that are you know they have autonomy um they have the ability to kind of do do things by um by an initiative that maybe comes from like someone in the country that's a prince or someone with a certain amount of you know power and authority in that system so as I understand it the International Financial Center is a particular jurisdiction it's also you know a um I guess it's a matter a number of buildings I think it's also um I don't know maybe it's a some kind of Corporation of some kind but most specifically it has its own courts right so that was pretty interesting something we learned recently so the International Financial Center in Dubai has different statutes than maybe the rest of the the country and maybe even businesses outside of that jurisdiction one of the things that we learned was that there's some innovation in the court system and specifically around these um around this issue of succession where while wills and things like inheritance maybe aren't applicable to a lot of people in that region due to you know their religion or you know their their practices uh you know certain of them need this kind of solution so in that jurisdiction the court along with some entrepreneurs I think created a solution where the court itself could actually touch wallets and administer activities or have oversight of this you know very significant uh you know and legal legal transaction um and you know appropriating the resources after someone's passed so that I think is a pretty interesting story that more more people are obviously going to discuss right there's a lot of like autonomy like I said they can move fast maybe in that region whereas in the United States maybe these things get deliberated for years and the courts never uh have access to a wallet or hold a key or have anything of um you know anything of consequence right whereas it seems that some of these other jurisdictions are actually maybe Hands-On yeah which is interesting so it's Innovative um probably solve some problems for people like us or people that are affected by these conversations but also May create problems that's true so what we also learned is that within the building of the the wallets and the uh the infrastructure that when um someone did pass then the information was triggered and which led to the release relas of the digital assets to the airs so again different jurisdictions and areas are looking at Solutions so that way uh someone who's in a fiduciary duty position actually has partial control and knowledge but not all the information so that way the airs actually can benefit all right so we already touched on this approximately 60 to 70% of Americans are without a will and in the UK it's estimated that 50% of adults do not have a will so for anyone who's listening or watching any of this if you don't have a will start write it down it's it can doesn't have to be very complicated but it it take the first step all right taxes in death we always hear it that those are the two things that can always happen um thoughts on how do we address the tax side of death and the digital acid side of this you know the will because again um when you have digital assets you have to account for them and so you know that's changing a lot um what are your thoughts about that so one of the things that I get is kind of The Devil's Advocate argument a lot when I talk to people about this specific thing is well I don't have enough to worry about a will or they know what to do with it or I've made sure the right people understand the process but what they may not consider is there are legal proceedings that you guys can speak to far better than I can I'm sure um there are steps and things that have to happen that can be greatly expediated by accounting for it with a little bit more effort while you're alive uh nobody wants to deal with probate it is a long drawn out very costly process that will take a good portion of what you leave behind away from the people you intend it for so again in my mind it always goes back to education in the US we over complicate things as we typically do especially around taxes so understand the basics surround yourself with people who understand the details that you can trust and put contracts in place for everything to protect yourself so um we were talking prior to coming down here as to what happens when you know you do pass and you have to pay certain expenses from an estate and we were talking about the importance of us as the person who's writing the will to say what asset do we want to have sold first do you want to share some of your thoughts on that yeah so if you if you don't quite address it you know someone might clean out your Bitcoin account for your errors because there's debts that need to be covered and maybe you had quicker better assets that weren't as long-term durational as you anticipated Bitcoin being that you would want sold first but they're wanting to you know make it easier on themselves or for whatever reason they just want to pass that hot potato on so they're like let's just get rid of this and then use those funds but now that's like a way larger taxable event for them it costs them more and it costs them in the long term if they see Bitcoin as like a long-term asset whereas you can maybe sell um a quicker asset or renegotiate your debts um to where you pay them down over time or there's so many mechanisms you can do that you would want to address that to where you're not just selling off the Bitcoin and creating that taxable event and then kind of double paying on it because now you're using it to pay off debt that didn't really need to be paid off in that way so it's definitely something you want to address in the Forefront because there's a lot of value over time in that and you don't want to just get it burned because people don't know what they're doing yeah so I would also add when you're creating a digital asset organizer for yourself categorize your digital assets so you might have nfts you might have airdrops you might have crypto cryptocurrency you might have different types of digital assets make that list but also make a decision is this something that you want to have held on to is this something that you might want to have appraised and assessed to maybe be sold first you're the one that knows these assets if you're staking or if you have any other wallets that you're creating those someone in your family is not going to have a clue as to the value of that and your attorney might not have a clue is to the value your accountant will know if you've told your account because they're going to know the cost basis but still that doesn't mean that you're going to want to sell that asset right away so Matt from your perspective again of being in the space how would you categorize Assets in terms of where people might be thinking about both selling holding or that type of thing if they're creating a will I know it's a yeah valuing your assets right um I think knowing the upside right or knowing like the LI there's things like you said staking right um there may be assets that you consider to be like a better long-term hold and you may want to articulate that uh there's definitely could be um you know assets that like you said you want to liquidate first but there also maybe things that have already um have already sort of like expired in value right so you you're going to understand those things probably if you're the investor more than anyone right and articulating that probably is very important because things some some things may have a a some wallets may have longer term value you know you never know this industry is also still very new airdrops are still very new uh you know formative ideas and where we might go I think no one really knows uh as it relates to like policy and regulation even less Clarity there but you as the investor you know you probably know why you invested you may have your own Horizon articulating that might be important I want to add something to that's okay I could yes I actually have a question for you it's not just on the business side because again when you have a business and you're investing in different digital assets you also might have assets that are in different countries so that adds a whole another layer of um both access to those accet assets as well as decisions within the business is how do you liquidate those assets or do you hold them and then the insurance policies and everything else don't sleep on a trust that is something that I think a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of they don't quite understand or the misconception is trusts are for really rich people right it's for the 1ers and that is actually the complete opposite of accurate trusts are a fundamental part of passing on wealth no matter what that quantity of wealth is all of your physical asset assets should exist in a trust my husband and I own farms in the midwest where we were raised we own a house and other tangible assets those exist in a trust that trust dictates what happens to those assets when we're gone and it protects them so our children can't just sell them we've all heard stories of like a sibling that just like gets rid of and loses their inheritance it helps protect against that there's also digital protective trusts for digital assets and those kinds of trust are really important because you can specify how you want set asset handled whether it's a series of domains or uh a bunch of cryptocurrency and so don't sleep on trusts and also ensure that you understand the application of what should happen to those different types of assets based on where they're located yeah great point now I know that individuals uh who might be listening might want might have thought that we would be really very specific in our conversation today but we have to be Broad in general because we can't give legal advice so we're giving you the big picture and again everyone who's sitting up here can definitely assist with the details but we need you to think about how do you organize everything because that still falls on the individual's shoulders when you ask a professional to help you next SL so these are just some examples full disclaimer hav inv vetted them but these are just some examples of online resources for possible solutions for um where you can go to have um your Wills or your digital assets held or possibly um a will created but again I haven't looked at all of that so that is the disclaimer there yeah so again follow us on social media we're here to help you and we're here to answer your questions as they develop because sometimes we don't know the questions until we have the issue and then we realize that we need an answer and that's when we reach out so um go to the next slide and again we are here to provide free resources so definitely reach out to us um do you have any questions we have about six minutes and we are open to questions oh let's also just get because because there is only six minutes left let's get final I guess he questions yeah great idea you why don't you go first since you kicked it off okay put you on the spot yeah okay easy for me my final remarks are definitely a big thank you to the panelists very much so thank thank you to Jackie to this production crew yes um to all the amazing uh sponsors and mentors people like s and Stefan and um all the founders of eth den I'd like to definitely do a shout out to them and then um you know to everyone that you know comes out and supports building uh yeah the sponsors anyone that's supported a bounty big thanks um we'll uh I'll introduce you to uh Jackie and she'll give you a private tutoring session in exchange for being such a great sponsor of this conference that's I'll yield the rest of my time here okay Amber so probably final Thoughts From Me are don't be afraid to reach out to the people around you one of the greatest assets about the web 3 ecosystem is that it is one of the most Community Driven experiences I've ever had in the time that I've existed and early on I found that I rarely if ever had anybody say they wouldn't be willing to offer me some kind of knowledge or help or introduction so I mean like from me to anybody listening feel free to reach out I absolutely thrive on helping make those connections and offer advice and assistance where I can and point you in the direction of people who know more than me where I can't she's definitely her nickname is the cupid of networking so very much so I Echo everything they just said thank you so much e Denver and all the sponsors here and for this great panel that bi helped put together and I also think web 3 has just been the most rewarding space in in teaching um community and support um it's ethos is wildly helpful for anyone who's willing to learn so really leverage that and also um you know the legal lift just doesn't have to be scary talking to an attorney does not have to be scary you should be able to build thoughtfully and that's really what I encourage all of my clients to do there's not a lot you can't do in this space but you have to do it thoughtfully if you don't want to get in trouble if you don't want to lose your assets if you if you don't want to make mistakes or or forget about these big things like Wills so talking to an attorney early is not as scary as you think and I I always do like a a 30 minute intro call just to touch base with you to see if I can even help you without a charge and I don't know a lot of attorneys that do charge for that initial phone call so please reach out to an attorney if you're building something if you win a bounty here and you want to build and and make an MVP from that project with the funding you won create a Founders agreement just reach out to an attorney and work with them and get started in a thoughtful way because it'll just help you so much down the line very much so and I know I've been in the space for only nine years a lot of you have been in the space a lot longer um and every year I'm learning something new and every year I'm adding another digital asset to my collection because I'm a Bitcoin miner I'm a node owner these are all things that I'm learning about and I know that I need for my daughter to be able to have her understand because again these are things that I'm having a lot of fun with but eventually it's going to benefit her so you know if you have someone in your family that you want to have benefit we have a responsibility now to take that initiative we are in a decentralized space we need to tell more individuals within our space just take a few moments write down what your digital assets are give the directions that you need it's not that difficult even if it's not complete in terms of your thoughts you're at least putting something on paper so that way you take ownership of what it is that you're creating because if you don't take ownership of what you created and say what you want then the state will decide for you and I know that all of us in this space would like to make our own decisions so let's do it you know um anyway we appreciate everyone who's here I did see that there was a question or two in the audience yeah questions yeah questions any oh excellent we got a mic in the stands with h with TFA and the identity and fingerprint on yeah what a mess are we have to like cut off people's fingers when they pass something I'm glad you asked the question and I'm going to tell this story I have a friend a dear friend who wanted to give $10,000 to of Bitcoin to his granddaughter and so I said great I said I asked where is it where's your wallet and he told me wasn't one that I knew but was fine but it was one that he accessed on his phone so I said okay how are you accessing your phone he said with my face I said get it off I said how is your granddaughter going to access your phone when you're not around with um you know with your face so he changed it to number so that way she then had the code or the parent had the code and that way you're right with the double Authentication with the facial ID with everything else like that we think of it as security but it's actually a barrier and I think one of you actually was telling me another story of a challenge um with the the fingerprint and the facial ID as well um so again that's my unsolicited legal advice don't use it on your phones I don't know if anyone else has a uh there there's pretty cool tools available like one of the ones you had listed websy they actually have something called like a panic button that you set up as an escape plan so what happens to your stuff if you need an emergency exit from whatever that may be so there are ways to go about doing that you just have to to again goes back to what you said you got to be thoughtful yeah and you also have to think about who who do you want to have access to this information there's 20 there's 20 seconds left let everybody just take a deep breath for yourself you know enjoy your time here you made it here maybe you traveled from a long way you have your own goals thank you for listening to our talk go build great things build great things and share it with everyone that you know because we're all here today and we appreciate each one of you yeah thank you thanks everybody thank you guys