Bitcoin Service Changes During Delay as Third-Party Drift

Third-Party Service Changes During Recovery Delay

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

Types of Services in Custody Arrangements

Many bitcoin custody arrangements depend on third-party services. Wallet software, coordination services, backup platforms, and communication tools all play supporting roles. When delay stretches the gap between setup and access, those services may change in ways that affect custody. The situation of bitcoin service changes during delay emerges when services the holder relied upon transform while no one from the holder's side is watching.

This memo examines how third-party services evolve independently of custody arrangements that depend on them. Services change terms, alter features, adjust pricing, or cease operations according to their own business logic. Custody setups that incorporated these services may find their assumptions invalidated when access is finally attempted.

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Types of Services in Custody Arrangements

Wallet software provides the interface for signing transactions. Some holders use specific software chosen for particular features. That software may update in ways that change how it functions, or it may stop being maintained entirely.

Coordination services facilitate multi-party arrangements. Services that help manage multi-signature setups, coordinate signers, or track key custody may alter their offerings. A service that handled inheritance planning might pivot to a different market or add requirements that did not exist at setup.

Backup and recovery services store encrypted data or provide recovery assistance. These services may change how they handle dormant accounts. What seemed like permanent storage may have retention limits. What seemed like guaranteed availability may become conditional.

Communication platforms enable contact between parties. Email providers, messaging services, and cloud storage that facilitate coordination among holders and heirs may change access policies, security requirements, or account handling for inactive users.

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How Services Change

Terms of service evolve constantly. Updates arrive via email notifications that inactive account holders do not read. Continued use implies acceptance of new terms, but accounts not being used do not trigger the continued-use acceptance. The account exists in limbo—still present but under terms the deceased holder never agreed to.

Feature changes occur for business reasons. A service may discontinue features that were not profitable. The specific capability the holder relied upon may be exactly the capability the service decides to remove. Niche features serving small user populations face particular risk of discontinuation.

Pricing changes can make services inaccessible. Free tiers become paid. Paid tiers increase prices. A service the holder used without ongoing payment may start requiring payment, and an inactive account will not make payments. The service may close the account after payment lapses.

Complete shutdowns occur when businesses fail. Cryptocurrency services face particular business risks—regulatory pressure, market downturns, competition, and founder departures. A service that existed when custody was configured may not exist when access is needed.

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Account Dormancy and Its Consequences

Inactive accounts face different treatment than active ones. Services have policies about dormant accounts that may include closure after periods without login. The exact period varies—six months, one year, two years—but the principle is common: accounts that show no activity eventually get cleaned up.

Dormancy policies often go unread. Buried in terms of service that users clicked through without examining, these policies surprise account holders—or their heirs—who assumed accounts would persist indefinitely. The assumption of permanence was always false, but that only becomes apparent when the policy triggers.

Security measures may treat dormancy as suspicious. Some services require periodic verification to maintain access. An account that fails to complete verification may be locked or closed. The deceased holder cannot complete verification, and heirs may not know verification is required until it is too late.

Data retention limits may apply. Even if an account remains accessible, data within it may be purged after periods of inactivity. Backup materials, transaction records, or coordination messages may disappear based on retention policies the holder never noticed.

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The Notification Problem

Services communicate changes via email. Important announcements, terms updates, and discontinuation notices go to the email address on file. When the account holder is dead, that email either goes to an inbox no one is reading or bounces because the email account itself has closed.

Estate administrators may not know which services to monitor. The deceased left no list of services their custody depended on. Discovering these services requires detective work that may happen too late to catch time-sensitive notices about changes or closures.

Notification periods may be short. A service announcing discontinuation may give thirty days notice. During probate delay, thirty days passes without anyone from the estate being positioned to respond. The window for action closes before the estate knows the window opened.

Even noticed notifications may be unclear to heirs. Technical announcements about feature changes or migration requirements may make sense to the original holder but confuse heirs unfamiliar with the service. Understanding the notification requires context that died with the holder.

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Scenarios of Service-Induced Failure

A holder uses a specific wallet application to manage their multi-signature setup. That application requires connecting to coordination servers the company operates. Eight months after the holder's death, the company announces it will shut down the coordination service. Heirs receive no notice because the holder's email is inaccessible. When they try to use the application, it no longer functions.

Encrypted backup data is stored with a cloud provider. The account has not been accessed in over a year while probate proceeds. The provider's dormancy policy triggers, and the account is scheduled for deletion. A warning email goes to the deceased's email address, which has itself been closed. The backup disappears before anyone knows to retrieve it.

A service that helped establish the holder's inheritance plan changes ownership. New owners pivot the company to a different market. Legacy accounts are given six months to migrate to a partner service. The estate, still in probate, misses the migration window. Account data is not transferred, and the original service closes the accounts.

Two-factor authentication for a critical account depends on a phone number that has been reassigned. The holder's phone plan was cancelled three months after death. The phone number, after a waiting period, was assigned to a new subscriber. Recovery of the account now requires a phone number that belongs to a stranger.

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Self-Custody Does Not Eliminate Service Dependency

Pure self-custody means controlling one's own keys without third-party involvement in the core custody. But even self-custody arrangements often depend on services for supporting functions. Email for communication. Cloud storage for backup. Software for signing. Hardware manufacturer support for device issues.

The supporting services form a wider dependency network than holders often recognize. A custody arrangement that seemed self-contained actually relies on continued availability of multiple third-party services. Each service is a potential point of change that can affect access.

Identifying all dependencies requires careful examination. The holder may not have documented which services their custody touched. Heirs may not know to look for dependencies beyond the obvious hardware and seed phrase. Hidden dependencies surface only when something stops working.

Reducing service dependency creates different tradeoffs. Eliminating reliance on coordination services may require more complex manual processes. Eliminating cloud backup may require physical backup distribution that creates its own risks. Every attempt to remove dependencies introduces alternatives with their own failure modes.

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Time Amplifies Service Risk

Longer delay creates more opportunity for service changes. A one-month delay may encounter no changes. A one-year delay is highly likely to encounter at least one significant change in at least one service the custody depends upon. Two years makes extensive changes nearly certain.

Service change rates vary by service type. Consumer services change frequently, driven by rapid product cycles. Enterprise services change more slowly but still change. No service guarantees permanent stability, and cryptocurrency services face particular volatility.

Compounding changes create cascading effects. One service change may break a process that depended on it. The alternative process may depend on a different service that has also changed. Multiple changes can invalidate an entire workflow, requiring complete reconstruction.

The holder who established custody is gone. Only they fully understood the service dependencies and how the pieces fit together. Heirs facing changed services must reverse-engineer a system designed by someone else, under conditions that system was not designed to handle.

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Conclusion

Bitcoin service changes during delay represents third-party drift where services evolve independently of custody arrangements depending on them. Terms change, features are discontinued, pricing shifts, and companies shut down—all according to business logic that does not account for custody dependencies.

Dormant accounts face particular risk as inactivity policies trigger closure or data deletion. Notifications about changes go to addresses that may be inaccessible or closed. Heirs may not know which services to monitor or how to interpret technical announcements.

Even self-custody arrangements depend on supporting services for communication, backup, software, and hardware support. Longer delay creates more opportunity for changes to accumulate. The holder who understood the dependencies is gone, leaving heirs to navigate evolved services under conditions those services were not designed to accommodate.

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