Bitcoin — Luxury Product as Part of a Family’s Heirlooms?

Could Bitcoin form part of a family’s legacy the way collectible art, jewelry, classic cars and real estate have?Paper wills for digital assets seems somewhat ironic. (Photo by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash)At the reading of the last will and testament of Timothy Calderon Smith (a.k.a toophunkcypher) in the year 2104, his descendants listened disinterested as the estate lawyer rattled off a list of possessions that Smith had acquired throughout his long life.“One, painting by Picasso, entitled Girl before a mirror, I bequeath to…”the lawyer droned on.Until finally, he came to the part that everyone sat up for,“And for my holdings of cryptocurrencies, 10,045.4678 Bitcoin I bequeath to…”There were audible gasps in the lawyer’s office.At the back of the room, one of Smith’s great-granddaughters had fainted and a secretary rushed to bring her a glass of water.True, this may be fiction, but it could also be the future. A future when digital legacies matter more than physical ones.As Bitcoin shot past US$61,000 this month, wealth managers who had for years dismissed the nascent asset class were having to field inquiries from their clients as to what the “Bitcoin solution” was for their portfolios.The only problem? Most of them didn’t have a plan.Dismissed for years as being too speculative and too volatile to form a part of a complete and healthy asset portfolio, the dynamics have changed dramatically for Bitcoin.From companies like Square, Tesla and MicroStrategy, all putting a portion of their treasure in Bitcoin, to billionaire hedge fund investors such as Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones touting Bitcoin’s value as a hedge against inflation, many are wondering if their portfolios wouldn’t benefit with just a small dose of Bitcoin.To that end, Bitcoin can be considered a type of Veblen good — a luxury good for which the demand for it…