Bitcoin Letter of Instruction Family

Writing Custody Instructions for Future Readers

This memo is published by CustodyStress, an independent Bitcoin custody stress test that produces reference documents for individuals, families, and professionals.

The Gap Between Knowing and Explaining

Someone decides to write instructions for their family about accessing their bitcoin. The idea sounds simple. Put information on paper so family members know what to do. But sitting down to write a bitcoin letter of instruction for family reveals challenges the holder did not anticipate. The gap between intention and execution grows wider with each attempt to bridge it.

This memo examines what makes these letters difficult to write and why the creation moment exposes problems that remained hidden before. Writing forces clarity that vague intentions did not require. The holder discovers they do not know how to explain what they understand intuitively. They realize their family does not share their context. The letter that seemed straightforward becomes complicated.

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The Gap Between Knowing and Explaining

Holders know how to access their own bitcoin. They have done it before. The process feels natural—plug in the device, enter the PIN, open the software, sign the transaction. This familiarity creates an illusion of simplicity. If the holder can do it easily, surely they can explain it easily.

Explanation is different from performance. The holder does not consciously track every step when accessing their bitcoin. Muscle memory handles part of it. Assumptions fill gaps. Writing instructions requires surfacing everything that happens, including steps the holder does not notice themselves taking. What was automatic becomes laborious when articulated.

Technical vocabulary presents another barrier. The holder uses terms like seed phrase, hardware wallet, passphrase, and derivation path without thinking. Family members may never have heard these terms. Every technical word in the letter requires either definition or replacement with simpler language. The holder writes for an audience that does not share their vocabulary.

Context cannot be assumed. The holder knows why bitcoin matters, why custody is important, why certain precautions exist. Family members may not understand any of this. Should the letter explain the basics of bitcoin? How much background is necessary? The scope of what the letter must cover expands as the holder considers what the reader does not know.

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Writing for a Future Audience

The letter addresses a future situation the holder cannot see. When will the family need these instructions? What will circumstances be? Will the reader be grieving, rushed, confused, or all three? The holder writes in calm conditions for readers who will be in crisis conditions. The mismatch affects what the letter needs to contain.

Family members reading the letter will not be able to ask clarifying questions. The holder will be dead or incapacitated—that is why the letter exists. Every ambiguity in the instructions becomes a potential failure point. The reader cannot call and ask what was meant. The letter must anticipate confusion and preempt it.

Technology may have changed. The letter written today describes software and hardware that exist now. Years may pass before the letter is read. Will the wallet software still work? Will the hardware wallet still be supported? Will the instructions still apply? The letter describes a snapshot of a changing landscape. The holder cannot know what will be obsolete when the letter is needed.

The reader's capabilities are unknown. Will it be a spouse, a child, a sibling? What is their comfort with technology? The holder may have multiple potential readers with different abilities. Writing for the least capable reader risks patronizing the more capable. Writing for the most capable risks losing the less technical. The audience is real people with unknown characteristics.

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What the Creation Moment Exposes

Sitting down to write often reveals that the holder does not fully understand their own setup. They thought they knew where everything was. Now they are not sure. Was the seed phrase in the filing cabinet or the safe? Which passphrase goes with which wallet? The letter demands precision that casual custody did not require.

Creation exposes gaps in documentation. The holder intended to keep good records but never quite got around to it. Now they need those records to write the letter. The absence of prior documentation makes the letter harder to write. The very act that should be documenting custody reveals how undocumented custody has been.

Relationships surface unexpectedly. Who gets the instructions? Who gets the keys? Are these the same person? Should multiple people have parts of the information? Family dynamics enter what seemed like a technical exercise. The holder must decide who to trust, who to include, and who to exclude. The letter is not just technical; it is relational.

Mortality becomes concrete. Writing a letter for after your death forces confrontation with the fact of death. Many people put off writing these letters not because of technical difficulty but because of emotional difficulty. The task carries psychological weight that other planning documents do not. This weight makes starting hard and sustaining effort harder.

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The Problem of Sensitive Information

A useful letter contains sensitive information. Seed phrases, PINs, passphrases, and locations of storage devices are all valuable to attackers. Putting this information in writing creates a new vulnerability. If the letter is found by the wrong person, the bitcoin becomes accessible to that person.

Security and clarity work against each other. A letter vague enough to be useless to attackers may also be useless to family. A letter clear enough to guide family may be clear enough to enable theft. The holder must navigate this tension without an obvious resolution.

Storage of the letter becomes a custody problem of its own. Where does the letter go? How is it protected from unauthorized access? How is it guaranteed to be found by the right people? The physical document or digital file has its own security requirements. Creating the letter creates something that needs protecting.

Sharing the letter's existence without sharing its contents is tricky. Family may need to know the letter exists so they can find it. But knowing it exists might prompt curiosity or premature access. The holder manages information asymmetries—who knows what, and when they know it—that add complexity beyond the letter's content.

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The Ongoing Nature of the Task

A letter of instruction is not done when written. Custody arrangements change. Wallets get upgraded. Storage locations move. Each change potentially invalidates part of the letter. What was true when written may not be true when read. The holder commits to maintaining the letter, not just creating it.

Maintenance is easy to neglect. The urgency that prompted writing the letter fades. Time passes. Changes happen without triggering updates to the letter. Gradually, the letter becomes a record of past arrangements rather than current ones. Neglected letters are worse than no letter at all if they misdirect rather than guide.

Version control creates confusion potential. If the holder updates the letter, are old versions destroyed? What if family finds an outdated version and follows obsolete instructions? Multiple drafts floating around different locations create uncertainty about which is authoritative. The holder must manage not just the current letter but the trail of previous ones.

Life circumstances also change the letter's context. Divorce, death of intended recipients, estrangement from family—any of these might make an existing letter inappropriate. The letter assumes a future that may not materialize as expected. Periodically reviewing whether the letter still matches reality is part of the task the holder signed up for.

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Why the Letter Often Does Not Get Written

The difficulty of the task discourages completion. What seemed like a simple document becomes a project with no clear endpoint. The holder may start multiple times, get stuck, and abandon the effort. Incomplete drafts accumulate. The task remains undone not because the holder forgot but because they never finished.

Perfectionism interferes. The holder wants the letter to be comprehensive, clear, and correct. Nothing seems good enough. Each draft reveals new problems. The letter that would be helpful even if imperfect never gets finished because imperfection feels unacceptable. Good enough becomes the enemy of done.

Procrastination disguised as planning delays action. The holder decides to research best practices, look at templates, read about what others have done. Research feels productive while avoiding actual writing. Months pass. The letter exists as an intention but not as a document. Research substitutes for execution.

The task is also lonely. Most people do not talk about their bitcoin custody, let alone their death planning. The holder has no one to review the letter, give feedback, or share the burden. Isolation makes the task feel heavier than it would with support. Writing for family without involving family makes the task paradoxically solitary.

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What Getting Started Reveals

Beginning the letter—even imperfectly—changes the holder's relationship with their custody. Problems that were abstract become concrete. The holder sees their setup through the eyes of someone who does not share their knowledge. Gaps that were invisible become visible when they must be bridged in writing.

A partial letter has more value than no letter. Even incomplete instructions give family a starting point. Knowing that a hardware wallet exists, approximately where it might be, and generally what it does beats knowing nothing. The letter does not need to be perfect to be helpful. Getting something written matters more than getting everything right.

The process itself may prompt better custody practices. The holder who realizes their setup is too complicated to explain may simplify it. The holder who realizes their documentation is scattered may consolidate it. Writing the letter becomes an audit of custody, not just a transmission of information. The creation moment creates improvement pressure.

Starting also makes continuation more accessible. A draft can be revised. An intention cannot. Once something exists on paper, incremental improvement is possible. The holder can return to the letter, add details, clarify language, and update information. Starting badly still starts. Not starting goes nowhere.

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Summary

Writing a bitcoin letter of instruction for family seems simple until the holder tries to do it. The gap between knowing how to access bitcoin and explaining it to someone else proves larger than expected. Technical vocabulary, assumed context, and intuitive knowledge all create barriers.

The creation moment exposes gaps in the holder's own understanding, documentation, and estate planning. Sensitive information must be protected while remaining accessible to the right people. Maintenance is ongoing because arrangements change and letters become outdated.

Letters often do not get written because the task is harder than anticipated, perfectionism interferes, and the work is isolating. Starting, even imperfectly, creates value that waiting for perfection does not. A partial letter gives family something to work with; an unwritten letter gives them nothing.

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System Context

Examining Bitcoin Custody Under Stress

Bitcoin Custody Handoff Document

Instruction Trust Failure in Custody

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