David Schwartz, XRP Ledger co-creator and current Ripple board member, proposed a novel self-custody Bitcoin inheritance setup on August 3, 2026. The proposed framework separates physical access to duplicate hardware wallets from the PIN needed to unlock them, providing a potential template for secure legacy asset transfers without third-party custodians.
Under the setup outlined by Schwartz, a wallet owner loads a single 24-word recovery seed onto two identical cold storage hardware devices and sets an identical PIN on both. One hardware device is entrusted to each of two relatives, while the shared unlocking PIN is given separately to two trusted friends. The friends are instructed to disclose the PIN to the relatives only upon the owner’s death. Because physical possession and knowledge of the PIN are split across separate parties, neither group can access the funds independently under normal conditions.
Schwartz emphasized that the model is an informal conceptual framework rather than a commercial product or guaranteed security solution. Critics note that because both hardware devices rely on the same recovery phrase, the setup functions as a single-signature wallet split into knowledge and physical components, rather than a true multi-signature system. Consequently, a compromised device paired with a leaked PIN could allow unauthorized fund movement.
The proposal comes amid heightened community discussions surrounding paper backups and seed entropy following recent firmware vulnerabilities in Coldcard devices. While paper seed backups avoid firmware risks, they remain vulnerable to physical destruction or theft. Schwartz’s proposal highlights ongoing attempts within the crypto ecosystem to address self-custody inheritance challenges without exposing master private keys to single points of failure.
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