Archive › Compare › Outcome by Trigger
Part of the CustodyStress archive of observed Bitcoin custody incidents
Bitcoin Custody Outcomes by Failure Trigger
Trigger describes the specific mechanism that set off a custody failure — distinct from the stress condition, which describes the broader scenario. A forgotten passphrase and a passphrase never recorded are both captured under the same stress condition (passphrase unavailable) but represent structurally different triggers with different implications for recovery.
This comparison shows outcome distributions across the trigger categories in the archive, sorted by blocked rate. It answers a different question than the stress condition comparison: not which scenarios are most dangerous, but which specific failure mechanisms most consistently produce irrecoverable outcomes.
Only trigger categories with sufficient documented cases are shown. Blocked % is calculated from determinate cases only. A case may be assigned one primary trigger.
Outcome distributions by trigger mechanism
Blocked
Constrained
Survived
91% blocked
0% constrained
9% survived
Most common scenario: Seed phrase unavailable
86% blocked
0% constrained
14% survived
Most common scenario: Seed phrase unavailable
83% blocked
0% constrained
17% survived
Most common scenario: Seed phrase unavailable
81% blocked
0% constrained
19% survived
Most common scenario: Device loss
81% blocked
1% constrained
18% survived
Most common scenario: Coercion
80% blocked
20% constrained
0% survived
Most common scenario: Vendor lockout
76% blocked
0% constrained
24% survived
Most common scenario: Seed phrase unavailable
70% blocked
20% constrained
10% survived
Most common scenario: Vendor lockout
67% blocked
11% constrained
22% survived
Most common scenario: Owner death
63% blocked
13% constrained
25% survived
Most common scenario: Passphrase unavailable
60% blocked
20% constrained
20% survived
Most common scenario: Device loss
55% blocked
0% constrained
45% survived
Most common scenario: Passphrase unavailable
52% blocked
48% constrained
0% survived
Most common scenario: Vendor lockout
48% blocked
10% constrained
43% survived
Most common scenario: Passphrase unavailable
44% blocked
0% constrained
56% survived
Most common scenario: Vendor lockout
17% blocked
83% constrained
0% survived
Most common scenario: Legal or authority constraint
What the trigger data reveals
Credential lost has the highest blocked rate of any trigger in the archive at 91% — 12 cases. This trigger represents the clearest form of irrecoverable custody failure: the critical secret is absent, and no external process can substitute for it.
Credential triggers — forgotten passphrase, passphrase never recorded, seed phrase never recorded — consistently produce high blocked rates because they have no recovery path. The cryptographic secret either exists somewhere accessible or it does not. No professional service, no legal process, and no technical intervention can reconstruct a secret that was never stored. These triggers differ from device-loss triggers in a critical way: a device can be replaced with a seed phrase, but a missing seed phrase cannot be replaced with anything.
Exchange and platform triggers produce lower blocked rates because institutional processes — bankruptcy claims, account recovery, regulatory intervention — provide partial resolution paths. The outcome is frequently constrained rather than blocked: access is delayed, reduced, or dependent on proceedings that may take years. But it is not permanently closed in the same way that a missing seed phrase closes permanently.
Device-loss triggers occupy a middle range — the blocked rate depends almost entirely on whether a seed phrase backup exists independently of the device. The trigger itself (device destroyed, discarded, or lost) does not determine the outcome; the backup state does. Two cases with the identical trigger can produce opposite outcomes based on one prior decision about seed phrase storage.
Regulatory action has the lowest blocked rate at 17% — 6 cases — reflecting the availability of institutional or process-based recovery paths for this trigger type.
Figures describe observed outcome distributions within documented cases in this archive only. Trigger classification reflects the documented mechanism — not all cases have sufficient information for precise trigger classification.
Bitcoin Custody Incident Archive — CustodyStress · custodystress.com/cases · 895 documented incidents
Outcome terms
Survived
Access remained possible under the reported conditions.
Constrained
Access remained possible, but only with delay, dependence, or significant difficulty.
Blocked
Access was not possible under the reported conditions.
Indeterminate
There was not enough information to determine the outcome.
Assessment terms
Survivability
The degree to which a custody system maintains the possibility of authorized recovery under stress.
This archive documents cases where a legitimate owner, heir, or authorized party encountered barriers accessing or recovering Bitcoin due to a failure in the custody arrangement. The central question for inclusion is: did the custody structure fail a legitimate access or recovery attempt?
Inclusion requirements
A case must satisfy all three of the following to be included:
- Legitimate access attempt. The person attempting to access or recover the Bitcoin was the owner, a designated heir, an executor, a legal authority, or another party with a legitimate claim — not a thief, attacker, or unauthorized third party.
- Custody structure failure. The failure was caused by a property of the custody arrangement — missing credentials, structural dependencies, documentation gaps, knowledge concentration, legal barriers, or institutional constraints — not market conditions, individual-level fraud or theft, or protocol-level issues. Platform-level failures that block legitimate user access are in scope regardless of their cause.
- Documentable outcome or access constraint. The case must have a stated or inferable outcome: access blocked, access constrained, access delayed, or access eventually achieved through a recovery path. Cases with entirely unknown outcomes are included only where the structural failure is documented and the constraint is unambiguous.
In scope
- Owner death or incapacity — Bitcoin held in self-custody that becomes inaccessible to heirs or designated parties because credentials, documentation, or operational knowledge were not transferred
- Passphrase loss — BIP39 passphrase forgotten or unavailable, blocking access to a funded wallet even where the seed phrase is present
- Seed phrase or wallet backup unavailable — no independent recovery path existed or the backup was destroyed, lost, or never created
- Device loss without independent backup — hardware wallet, phone, or computer lost or destroyed with no recovery path outside the device
- Documentation absent or ambiguous — heirs or executors cannot determine that Bitcoin exists, which wallet holds it, or how to access it
- Knowledge concentration — only one person knew the procedure, passphrase, or access method; that person is dead, incapacitated, or unreachable
- Multisig quorum failure — a threshold signature arrangement cannot be completed because signers are unavailable, uncooperative, incapacitated, or have lost their keys
- Legal authority / access mismatch — a court order, probate ruling, or power of attorney establishes legal entitlement but provides no technical path to access
- Institutional custody barrier — exchange or platform hacks, insolvency, regulatory seizure, or operational failure that caused a access constraint or failure for legitimate users, whether temporary, prolonged, or permanent. The failure of the custodian to remain available or solvent is itself the in-scope event.
- Forced relocation or geographic constraint — physical access to a device or location required for recovery is blocked by displacement, border restrictions, or political circumstances
- Coercion — the holder was compelled under threat to transfer Bitcoin or disclose credentials during an access event
- Hidden asset discovery — heirs or executors locate a wallet or account but cannot access it due to missing credentials or operational knowledge
Out of scope
- Market losses, investment losses, yield scheme losses, or Ponzi scheme losses
- Hacks or theft targeting an individual's personal security (phishing, SIM swap, social engineering, malware) where the custody architecture itself did not fail
- Unauthorized transfers where the holder's custody system was not the cause of the failure
- Ordinary transaction mistakes — wrong-address sends, fee errors, mistaken amounts
- Protocol-level failures — cryptographic vulnerabilities, consensus bugs, firmware integrity failures
- Deliberate burns or tribute burns
- Cases where the stated loss is unverifiable and no structural custody failure is described
Source and verification
Cases are drawn from public sources including forum posts, news reporting, court documents, academic research, and direct submissions. Each case is reviewed against the inclusion criteria above before publication. Source material is retained and available on request for documented cases.
The archive is observational and descriptive. It does not attempt to document all Bitcoin custody failures — only those meeting the criteria above with sufficient documentation to describe the structural failure and its outcome.
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